SIR JOHN STRACHEY'S "INDIA."* WE heartily recommend the agents of
disturbance, and the many persons whose main qualification for dealing with the great subject is an ample supply of the best intentions, to read with care Sir John Strachey's lucid and temperate account of India, based on the able lectures which he delivered before the University of Cambridge, and has now brought up to date.
Not that we suppose the former group would be turned aside from their mischief-making purposes ; or that all the latter class—and it is the larger—would be induced to see that good motives do not supply the want of knowledge. Still, the candid among them would come under a better influence, and it is possible that their views would be modified and their extra- vagances toned down, which would be something gained. As a rule, of course, it is hopeless to argue with people who have fads on Indian or any other subjects ; yet even they are not quite impervious to the steady, plastic force of facts. We should not expect to convince them that India is the last country in the world upon which it is safe to try fantastic experiments ; but even they may be shaken when they survey the vast and complex problems, varying with the latitude and longitude, which the alien rulers of India have to solve or leave alone. Sir John Strachey goes over the ground, but, of course, not all the ground—that would require volumes—he writes from a long and exceptional experience, his language is bright and strong, never heated, even under provocation, and we cannot help thinking that the agitators and the well-intentioned would profit by allowing the clear and equable stream of his expositions to flow through their minds.
The very starting-point of these lectures, elementary as it sounds, is one that needs, it seems, iteration and reiteration. There is no such country as India. It is "a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries," and "there is no general Indian name that corre- sponds to it." That is well understood in the land itself :— " I have been told by intelligent Natives of India who have visited Europe that they could see little differences between the European countries through which they had travelled ; the lan- guages being equally unintelligible, offered to them no marks of distinction ; the cities, the costumes, the habits of life, the manners and customs of the people, so far as a passing Oriental traveller could judge, seemed much the same in England, in Prance, and ht Italy. The differences between the countries in India, between, for instance, Bengal and the Punjab, or between Madras and Rajputana, seemed to them, on the other hand, immense, and beyond comparison greater than those existing between the countries of Europe. Englishmen have often similar impressions in visiting India [Yet] there are no countries in civilised Europe in which the people differ so much as the Bengali does from the Sikh, and the language of Bengal is as unintelligible in Lahore as it would be in London. An educated Mohammedan gentleman of Northern India has more in common with Englishmen than the Bengali graduates of the University of Calcutta."
Another fact, which sounds still more paradoxical, has to be recognised. Strictly speaking. the Englishman is not a foreigner in India, because there was no India. We have never destroyed a national government there, because none existed ; and had any existed, our dominion could not have been established. Sir John instructively points out that the principal "Native States" are really not national in any sense, but simply States not administered by Englishmen. They are districts inhabited by people to whom the ruling chiefs are as much strangers as we are ourselves. Speaking of the contests of the last century, he justly says that the larger share fell to the English, but that their competitors had no better titles than our own. Some are 3fahrattas, some 3faltommedans, and what they hold now was won by their forefathers with the sword. None of the principal Native States are much older than our own, and all the rulers are foreigners to the people they govern. Describing the great Hyderabad State, which belongs to the Nizam, Sir John reminds us that "there is no part of India in which the people have less sympathy with their rulers, [who are] men of other countries and of another faith." The restoration of Berar, for example, would bring back Mahommedans to lord it over Hindoos. The curious thing is, that the only States which are approximately national, and have ancient dynasties and very old institutions, are those which have been preserved by the British Government. These facts do not square with popular notions, or with the special views of India so steadily eghibited by interested writers in our
• India. By Sir John Strachey, (IC.8.1. London: Segall Paul and 00.
own day, or with the teaching of eloquent orators and essayists in former generations. Sir John Strachey laments, and he has a right to lament, over the mischief done by the errors of Burke, the rhetoric of Macaulay, and the misleading " history " of Mr. James Mill ; the mischiefs flowing from these sources are hard to counteract, especially as we have poured them in streams upon the educated native. The facts sustain our moral right to be and to rule in India, over Native States as well as our own territories, all the more because, with all our defects, we are knitter and more enlightened than any native rulers ever were, and have given India peace and order from end to end. When Scindia remarked that he could drive safely from Gwalior to Poona in a dog-cart, he gave a familiar illustration of the Pax Britannica ; and when, referring to his subjects, he said to the British Resident, "They will stand a great deal more from me than they would from you," he subtly distinguished between the position of a Mahratta chief in the Ganges Valley, and an Englishman in Oude or the Punjab. At the same time, being at the head of a "belligerent civilisation," we cannot expect to be popular ; and Sir John manfully admits that it is so. He says that our government is "too good," which is true ; but the supply of that com- modity is at least one main reason for our domination. Whatever happens, we cannot imitate the Russian. so fre- quently held up as an example, for he interferes with nothing unless it trenches on his political power. Nevertheless, we have to tolerate, and are bound to tolerate, much, and for solid reasons :— "I never heard of a great measure of improvement that was popular in India, even among the classes that have received the
largest share of education. The people are intensely Conservative and intensely ignorant, wedded, to an extent difficult for Euro- peans to understand, to every ancient custom, and between their customs and religion no line can be drawn. We deceive ourselves in regard to the changes that arc taking place. We believe that our Western knowledge, our railways and our telegraphs, must be breaking up the whole fabric of Hinduism ; but these things have touched in reality only the merest fringe of the ideas and beliefs of the population of India. The vast masses of the people remain in a different world from ours. They hate everything new, and they especially hate almost everything that we look upon an progress."
As regards the so-called religious condition of the rural populations, Sir John holds that the greatest active force is what he calls "Brahmanism," the ordinary Hindoo peasant being little affected by the gods of his mythology. He adopts the language of Mr. Ibbetson, who says that the prevailing power is a sacerdotalism, and not a religion :—" A man may disbelieve in the Hindu Trinity ; he may invent new gods, however foul and impure; he may worship them with most revolting orgies; he may even abandon all belief in super- natural powers, and yet remain a Hindu." But he must reverence and feed the Brahmans, abide by caste rules, pre- serve himself from ceremonial pollution, and avoid the unclean.
Thus, Brahmanism brings within its pale almost all forms of worship, and adopts all sorts of strange gods and demons ; and Sir John says there can be no doubt that " the people who every year become Brahmanists outnumber all the converts to all the other religions put together." The belief that the Hindu population is divided into the four great classes described by Mann is a " delusion " which it seems impossible to kill. "The Brahmans maintain their exceptional position ; but no one can discern the other great castes which Mann described." If the Brahmanical fold grows ever larger and its contents more varied, "the great majority of Moham- medans," according to Sir John, "hardly deserve that name," since they retain in a great degree the old social customs and superstitious usages. Here is a typical story quoted from Mr. Ibbetson, and of the humorously grotesque class, befitting things Indian -- "A brother-officer tells us that he once entered the rest-house of a Mohammedan village in Hissar, and found the headmen refreshing an idol with a new coat of oil, while a Brahman read holy texts alongside. They seemed somewhat ashamed of being caught in the act, but, on being pressed, explained that their Mulls had lately visited them, had been extremely angry at seeing the idol, and had made them bury it in the sand. But now that the Munn, had gone, they were afraid of the possible consequences, and were endeavouring to console the god for his rough treat- ment."
The orthodox Moslem live mostly, if not wholly, in the towns; they are of foreign origin, differing in that respect and in their fervour from the 3foslemised Hindus ; are im- proved by education, and, Sir John says, are not disloyal.
Their numbers he puts at a comparatively low figure, and he does not think them dangerous, on the whole. He says they are "a small and energetic minority whose political interests are identical with ours, and who, under no conceivable circum- stances, would prefer Hindu dominion to our own." He also sees a growing tendency to shake off Brahmanical influences and Hindu superstitions,—a line of motion which, if pro- longed, will increase the antagonism of the two faiths, if one of them is a faith, and make the vigorous minority more compact.
We have no space to touch on the questions of government, administration, and policy—or, rather, policies—for, with few exceptions, they differ everywhere ; nor can we enter on matters of finance, always tempting, and in no country less easy to understand. Besides giving an admirable account of an "Indian Province," with the body and spirit of which he was so familiar, Sir John performs a like service in regard to the other great heads into which the vast subject is divided. Not the least interesting is the last chapter on Bengal Proper, itself a Kingdom. He deals with the famous Permanent Settlement in a manner not favourable to that well-meant experiment, and he is not silent on the demerits of the "much-talking," educated Bengalees, whom he brackets, and justly, with Maliratta Brahmans of Bombay, and the English-speaking Hindus of Madras. They have been recently exhibiting themselves, under paid European guidance in the so-called National Congresses ; and it is satisfactory to know that the noisy handful have no influence, at present, over a population which they do not represent even in the remotest way. As we have said, it would be well were these folk and their European patrons to read and digest the truths so quietly but firmly put forth in the modestly written book which has called up these comments.
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