THE REAL BAR TO INDIAN S ELF-GOV ERN AI ENT.
By LORD WINTERTON, M.P.
T HAVE for several years past, both- in and out of office, by study, by reading and by discussion with. Europeans and with Indians, in their own country and here (in Whitehall, at Simla, Bombay or Calcutta, in the lobby of the House of Commons,. on steamship, or train, .or. wherever it might be that we ,_met) .given close attentionto the problem of governance in India. I have striven, in Parliament, against those who assail the Montford !' Act either from the right or . the -.left. I believe, as firmly as I did at the time -the Act passed its third reading in the House of Commons. in October pr:November, 1919, that the advance then made towards self-government was, both morally. an&politic;ally :inevit- able, even if (which pin not coneerned either to admit or deny) the path chosen was not the...right one. Yet find ,myself to-clay as far off as ever from -visualizing the conditions under which the territory which is now known as British India will one day exercise the functions of; self-government -within the Empire, I .believe that I am in very - distinguished company. I hazard. the. opinion tha -neither :Mr. Montagu, nor Lord,:Chelmsford (or for the matter of that any other member of. the present :Government) nor Mr., Lloyd .George, Prime Minister in:. the years when the Montford sellente was born, would ,care tordayAo make a statement_ showing how -the :difficulties in the.-way. of granting ,a.forra of government for India even . remotely resembling Dominion, self-government may be overcome. - , I do not propose to .d.eaL this.article with_all :those difficulties. There is the ever-present IIindm,Moslem feud. No onc . should _underestimate its ..potentialities for evil, nor the appalling mass. of :suffering, which for generations: before, the British went _to India it caused. But strange things are happening in.. Eastern religious worlds , to-day, as witness recent events in Turkey, whilst the fact that the leaders of extreme political. Hinduism and extreme political. Mohammedanism in India belong, generally speaking, to the same -class, with the ideas .of their class' may, even yet; produce a semblance of unity.. sufficient to make. a colourable case, against refusing self-government on the grounds of religious rivalry.
Again, the complete difference of outlook between various parts. of India, a difference of race, of climate, of economic aims, might, so far as self-government is concerned, be partially. dealt with by some sort of federalism. The same method might solve the, difficulty of the glaring contrast between ideas and ideals of government in Indian States and British India. Any one of these problems would tax to the utmost the statesmanship and ingenuity of an Alexander Hamilton or a Lord Durham, but they may be soluble in time. There remains one supreme one, which because it goes to the very root of the tree which bears a huge proportion of the fruit of Indian life, custom, tradition and religion, can .only be .solved, as it would seem, by uprooting that tree and planting another. But such an action is outside the bounds of possibility for any Government of India, whether constituted as at present or purely Indian. With all the good will possible British influence. in India has failed, throughout the years, effectively to raise the status of the fifty million of depressed classes and outcastes; they ,form nearly a sixth of the whole popula- tion of British India, a huge proportion to be, in virtual servitude, not to the British overlords, of Swarajist funaination„, but to other Indians. " A community," in the words of Rao Bahadur 0. Kandaswami Chetty, speaking at a congress of the. Depressed Classes of Southern India in September, 1922, " whose existence is one long story of unremitting toil rewarded by poverty, social degradation and religious excommunication."
The position of these people is well and succinctly put by a writer in the Times of .May 1st last :- "Let, the reader imagine an England in which pig-keepers. barbers, charwomen, agricultural labourers and most unskilled workmen as well, tanners, publicans, brewers, gipsies, and fishermen, were not merely forbidden to inter-marry or eat with the rest of the population, but were debarred access to all churches, were liable to be attacked if they were caught drawing or drinking water from public taps, were forbidden the use of respectable streets in many towns, and were in serue counties prevented by threats of violence from sending their children to board schools, all in the name of religion which, its expounders maintained, made these disabilities hereditary ; then. he will have some idea of the situation of tho outcasts in parts of India. . . . "
It is because such a state of affairs is so alien to British ideas_ that it is inc_onceivable that Parliament can ever grant full self-government to India until those Indians, who. have the power, to do -so, themselves provide the remedy,, for no otte,Ose can. When in :a recent debate in the House of Commons I made .a statement to this effect, it. was received with assent in all parts of the House, including the Labour benches. I was agreeably surprised because in the past all Labour and many Liberal speakers have assumed that Parliament should at,once grant every measure of self-government advocated by. Indians in _public life without troubling to inquire• whether those Indians had any mandate for repre- senting, or any sympathy with the, claims of .their own outeaate fellow-conntrymen.. I am the. last to wish to decry .those. Indians who are in public life in India to-day. They justly resent the contemptuous .criticism whioh -they -receive from some quarters in this country. The small circle which embraces the politicians and administrators among the Indian races contains quite as high, if not higher, a. proportion of men of great ability and social charm as that of similar circles in other countries., They are delightful acquaintances and in conversation their quick-witted intellect enables them to outstrip the more lumbering British minds. For all- these reasons one can hardly wonder that certain ex.,. Governors, in their public speeches and writings, advocate a quicker march towards self-government than the Montford Act lays down. They have worked with these men,, they have formed. strong friendship with many of them, they have experienced years of tactful but persistent pressure from them to .accelerate the process of Indianization ; what easier than to say, " Let them have the Government which they want " ?
Unhappily, it is eveBy day_ becoming more clear. that what they want is merely the -completion of the process which is already in progress of the transference of power from a British to an Indian bureaucracy to be controlled by a small oligarchy of lawyers, journalists and business men, in their turn sternly.. fettered. by the .immutable laws of creed and caste. it is probable that as a first step in Indian constitutional evolution this was inevit- able. To make this step easier than it is at present, alike to European and to Indian Civil Servants, it may be desirable at once to put into practice the recom, mendations of the Lee Commission. But,, when all is said and done, what we have all got to consider is the ultimate goal to be attained. Are any considerable section of those Indians who have political. power in. India to-day, prepared to accept Mr. Gandhi's dictum. that without an active sense of brotherhood real Swaraj is impossible ? Would a purely Indian Administration, assuming that the very difficult question of defence against external aggression had been .found to be soluble, be able before it wAs set vpto give the British ParliaMent effective guarentees that Under it the depressed classes would 'enjoy equal political rights with the highest castes ? That, in other words, there should be no political discrimination on religious grounds against any caste or dass, and where religious scruples or practice run counter to natural rights, the sufferers shall have the power, by their votes and through consti- tutional action, to get their grievances remedied ? Will the higher castes do themselves what they have prevented us from doing all these years, on the score of inter- ference with religious matters, and remove the bar that keeps millions of their fellow-countrymen and women in a state of abject social degradation ? The answer, I fear, to all these questions, at present, is No. Obviously the first thing to do is to give the depressed classes a chance of being educated. Yet, though education as a transferred subject is managed by Indians themselves, the tentative efforts of Indian Ministers in various provinces to extend the educational system for the benefit of the depressed classes has met with persistent reactionary obstruction from other Indians. In my opinion, the day has gone when Indians, by merely saying, " We demand that you give us Swaraj, then we will show what we are going to do with it," will impress any body of opinion in this country. I believe, as I stated above, that even with a Labour Govern- ment in power, Parliament will yield neither to threats or cajolery on those lines, but will require to be satisfied that the self-government to be given is one which guarantees the rights of the poorest and most helpless people in India. Indeed, any other course would be wholly inconsistent with the professions of any modern House of Commons.
. If Indian statesmen are wise they will, in the next few. years, seek to convince this country, and show by their actions, that they are prepared to get their own house in order, and they will refrain from the futile task of trying to play off one British party against another, or from arguing on such false analogies as that of a comparison of India with Ireland. The opportunity and the good will are there ; it only remains for India to use both.
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