MR. GRANT DUFF ON SOUTHERN INDIA.
SPEECHES delivered in India are rarely reported here, and still more rarely reported well ; but we have before us the textual version of one of rather unusual interest. It is an address to the University of Madras, and contains the opinions
which the Governor, Mr. Grant Duff, now near the end of his term of office, has formed of the position of the higher, or, rather, the better-educated, classes in Southern India. Local opinion differs a little as to Mr. Grant Duff's success as a Governor, one side pointing to his promptitude in executive work, especially in organising the expedition to Mandelay, and another side hinting that he reflects too much, and allows questions of importance to stand over far too long. That practice, however, is traditional in Madras, where the Govern- ment has been distinguished for a century by a patience worthy of the Roman Curia, and by a certain inability to believe in forcing progress which drives the more sanguine rulers of Bengal half-crazy with impatience. Be that as it may, Mr. Grant Duff's power of reflection, and of almost judicial comment on affairs, are well known to us all, and his summary of one side of the situation is most curious. He finds that the higher education which is imparted and tested in the Madras University remains in a singular degree sterile. The graduates, of many of whom he speaks with all respect, do nothing with their acquire- ments; or, rather, they do only two things,—they talk Radical politics, and they seek Government appointments, which accordingly they eagerly desire both to multiply and to throw open to themselves. That is a futile ambition for an entire class to entertain, for, as the Governor tells them, if every remaining appointment were placed in their hands—they are very few, and "a few must belong to Europeans, not in virtue of their being the descendants of conquerors, but in virtue of that education of ages which has made the Aryan of the West what he is "—it would be nothing among so many ; but, as yet, it is their only one. The beautiful Presidency, which in scenery is to Northern India what Switzerland is to Prussia, one- third larger than Italy, with its 90,000 artificial lakes, called locally by the name of "tanks," a word productive of endless misapprehension, is languishing for engineers, and especially hydraulic engineers ; but the graduates do not become engineers, though the whole history of Southern India shows that they possess not only engineering capacity, but dis- tinct originality for such undertakings. The population gives an eager wei.come to doctors ; but though hundreds are needed, especially of the class we used to call apothecaries, only three graduates in all Southern India have adopted that pro- fession. Agriculture promises any reward to native agricul- turists of skill ; but with an exception here and there, no educated man devotes himself to improving the productiveness of the soil. The want of Madras is wealth, there is plenty of room for manufacturers, and the openings for internal com- merce are endless ; but it is not to commerce or to manu- factures that the educated betake themselves. While Bengal and Bombay are alive with plantations and factories, Madras remains the poorest Presidency. Nor do they devote them- selves to social development, for which South India offers an unequalled field, her social systems being far less stereo- typed than those of the North, and her great Turanian population—nearly half the whole—offering entirely new problems for solution ; nor to philosophy, though the Eastern Aryans at least, if not the Turauians also, are born philosophers ; nor to studies like philology, nor to art, though there are arts, like architecture, for which their genius is undoubted; nor to research, though such a field for research as Southern India, more especially in the antiquarian direction, scarcely exists in the world. If the British rulers wish to decipher old inscriptions in Madras, they are com- pelled to "send thousands and thousands of miles away and hunt up some scholar in the valley of the Danube." The educated, in fact, seek neither material wealth nor the im- provement of their knowledge, nor philosophical culture, but only status and pay in the service of the State. All the work which a people beginning to be cultivated would naturally do, and which in some half civilised countries is done with passionate zeal, is in Southern India left undone, and this both by its Aryan population and its Dravidian or Turanian, to whom the Governor, with perfect historical accuracy, but somewhat grotesque effect, addresses this singular argument The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature, as if it were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Canarese. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as niggers,' but they did not, like the proud speakers, or writers, of Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped-up the Southern races as Rakshasas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions upon Varna, colour."
This picture, that of a population of thirty-one millions in which the class most eager to be instructed, is when instructed sterile, is a painful one, and will be held by many minds to justify those, of whom the present writer was one, who, a genera- tion ago, bestirred themselves to resist the idea of Macaulay, that culture should be diffused in India through English studies. They maintained that true instruction would never be gained by an Oriental people through a Western language, that education in English would be productive of nothing but a caste, who, like the "scholars" of the Middle Ages, would be content with their own superiority, and would be more separated from the people than if they had Leen left uneducated ; that, in short, English education, how- ever far it might be pushed, would remain sterile. They pressed for the encouragement and development of the indi- genous culture, and would have had High Schools and Univer- sities, in which men should have studied, first of all, to perfect the languages, and literature, and knowledge of their own land. They fought hard, but they failed utterly, and we have the Baboo, instead of the thoroughly instructed Pundit. They probably did not allow enough for the influence of time, and they certainly did not admire enough the few remarkable men whom the system has produced; but so far, they have been right, and they may be right throughout. English education in India may remain sterile for all national purposes. It is not a pleasant thought, but it is an unavoidable one, that the conquest of the East Aryans by the West Aryans, though it has brought such marvellous blessings in the way of peace and order and material prosperity, though it has given to millions, as Mr. Grant Duff says, all the results of political evolution without the wearying struggle for them, may have brought also evils which overbalance, or almost overbalance, all its gifts. Not much is gained to the world because under the shadow of the Empire Bengalees increase like flies on a windless day. It is no time yet for conclusions, for the work of conquest has but just ended, and that of sowing seed has but just begun ; but that decay of varieties of energy, that torpor of the higher intellectual life, that pause in the application of art knowledge, from architecture down to metal work and pottery, which have been synchronous with our rule in India, these are to the philosophic observer melancholy symptoms. Why is not the world yet richer for an Indian brain ? There was a Roman peace once round the Mediterranean, under which originality so died away that it is doubtful whether, but for the barbarian invasion, society would not have stereotyped itself, and even Christianity have grown fossil ; and our rule, much nobler though its motive and its methods be, may be accompanied by
same decay. In the two hundred years during which Spaniards have ruled in the New World, but one Indian name has reached Europe, and Juarez was only a politician. We have only to hope and to persevere ; but it is impossible, when the results are from time to time summed up by cool observers like the Governor of Madras, not to feel a chilling doubt. We think little of the political childishness of educated natives on which Mr. Grant Duff is so serenely sarcastic, for that is a mere symptom of unrest, possibly healthy unrest ; and we utterly disagree with him in his assertion that only a wealthy community can be well governed, holding Switzerland to be better governed than France; but the want of spontaneous effort in all direc- tions, the limitation of ambition to a salary from the State, seem to us symptoms either of intellectual torpor or intellectual despair. We know quite well the tendency of Asia to stereo- type herself, but we had hoped that British dominion would revivify her ; and as yet—except possibly in the important domain of law, a reverence for which is slowly filleting down —the signs are very few. The Codes will, as Mr. Grant Duff believes, materially influence Indian thought ; but then, the Codes were the work not of Eastern Aryans, but of those who conquered them. We want original Indian work ; and as yet we have only men who will take any post, provided that its salary is guaranteed by the State and its work ordered and controlled regularly from above.
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