Great Britain and India
The purpose of this page is to ventilate that moderate Indian opinion which, recognizing all the difficulties, yet believes in the continued association of Great Britain and India within the loose framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations. We hope to include contributions from leading figures of the various sections of responsible opinion, Hindu, Moslem, and the Indian Stales.
The Realism of the All-India Congress Party
[This article by Mr. Reginald Reynolds, who was the bearer of Mr. Gandhi's letter to Lord Irwin last December, shows what grounds there are for the contention that the leaders of the Congress party in India are realists far more than some British critics suppose. The writer's conclusion that literacy is very much over- rated among British critics of India as a test of intelligence and education seems to us of great significance.] " No form of government can be called Swaraj ' in which the ultimate power does not lie with the peasant and the labourer."
It was in words such as these that I heard Mahatma Gandhi explain his ideal of Indian self-government on innumerable occasions. In a country where seventy per cent. of the population are directly engaged in agriculture, the significance of his dictum is obvious. By self-government he understands nothing less than democracy. " Swaraj," he has said, " does not mean a transference of power from white bureaucrats to brown bureaucrats."
This is the view of India's greatest leader, and it was the view accepted by those who drew up the Nehru Report, with its draft for an Indian Constitution on the basis of adult suffrage. To the average Englishman the suggestion brings little but a gesture of impatience. " The idea is prepos- terous ! " he explodes. And so he gives it no further thought.
It is, however, beyond doubt that this is the basis of the constitution demanded by the Congress leaders, and that if and when they vindicate the right of India to self-determina- tion, this is the type of Constitution that they will draw up. It is, therefore, worth our while to consider on what lines they are likely to proceed.
The first and most important point is to dispel a prevalent illusion that democratic institutions are unknown to India and that democracy is, or could possibly be, " unwanted in that country or any other part of the world. Republics are believed to have existed in India from the sixth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D., and no one who studies such a movement as the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 can doubt that the illiterate peasantry of India are capable to-day of disciplined and concerted action on their own initiative. Even more significant is the fact that, in the Bardoli Satyagraha the peasants proved to be in the right and the British bureaucracy in the wrong—if the judgment of the two English officials appointed by the Government itself to enquire into the case can be accepted.
The point at issue is not really whether there should be democracy, but how democracy can be made effective, and this is where the traditional institutions of India come to our aid. For innumerable centuries before the English came to India the country was divided into small village republics, of which Sir Charles Metcalfe (a member of the Governor's Council) wrote in 1830: " Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down revolution succeeds to revolution.. . . but the village communities remain the same. The union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little State in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause 'to the preservation of the people of India . . . and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence." (The italics are mine.) Two of the finest administrators that Britain has ever sent to India have added their praises to the many commendations that have been made of these village republics. Sir Thomas Munro spoke of the " strong attachment of the natives to trial by Panchayat" (village council), and described the British system which supplanted them as not only most expensive and vexatious, but totally inefficient " (East India Papers, London, 1820). Lord Elphinstone found the same facts to be true in an entirely different part of the country. Ile discovered that people in the Mahratta country were " exempt from some of the evils which exist under our more perfect Government," and put it down to the fact that " the (native) Government, although it did little to obtain justice for the people, left them the means of procuring it for themselves." (Report of October, 1819.) Elphinstone spoke strongly for the Panchayats in the same report. Mr. Bernard Houghton, a former member of the Indian Civil Service, has stated that " in sonic respects, particularly in its village organizations, its civilization (i.e., India's) is snore democratic and better Hum ours:' It was one of the feats of British efficiency that where previous conquerors had left untouched these centres of village liberty and self-government, our " more perfect government " began their systematic destruction. The historian Dutt, in his Economic History of India, deplores " the effacement of . . . .village self-government," as " one of the saddest results of British rule in India," while Sir Henry Cotton, who is of the opinion that " the people of India possess an instinctive capacity for local self-government " gives it as his opinion in New India that, "a costly and mechanical centralization has taken the place of the former system of local self-government and local arbitration."
There still remain, however, that " instinctive capacity for local self-government " and even skeleton organizations upon which to build. Nor is it improbable, if I understand the Congress leaders rightly, that the village republic will actually he the unit in the new state. The greatest essential for operative democracy is that representatives should be per- sonally known to their electorates, and this is doubly im- portant among ignorant or illiterate people.
The proposals of the Simon Conunission have been justly criticized by English " die-hards " because they mean, in effect, putting all India at the mercy of a handful of land- owners and bourgeois. The present Constitution enfranchises about 21 per cent. of the population on a property basis, and our " liberal " recommendations contemplate large " con- cessions " in the matter of power. In condemning such an irreparable evil the die-hards will have their staunchest supporter in the late C. R. Das, a nationalist leader who long ago foresaw and denounced such a form of " Dominion status."
The truth is that we have to clear our minds of a confusion between democracy and the British Constitution. India wants the former, and we offer a modified and diluted form of the latter. The Simon Commission was not only—on a true reading of the psychological issue—in itself a piece of intoler- able arrogance on our part ; its results are an affront to Indian intelligence and self-respect. India's need is for a Constitution that will enable her to deal with her economic problems, and when all the moral and philosophic arguments for democracy are laid aside, it still remains the only way for grappling wholeheartedly with administrative waste and poverty and the abuses of landlordism.
Against such a proposal for democratic government, illiteracy is always cited as an insuperable obstacle. Those who use this argument forget, incidentally, that the deplorable illiteracy of India is one of the greatest indiencpnts against us. (There is every reason to believe tlmt illiteracy has increased under our rule despite our schools and colleges.) It is also forgotten that Lord Durham revealed widespread illiteracy (and racial and religious conflict !) in Canada, in the same report in which he advocated a Dominion status Con- stitution. The real point, however, is whether literacy is not hopelessly over-rated among us as a test of intelligence.
I submit that it is, and that a traditional culture exists in India, independent of " book-learning," which is a better foundation for self-government than the Three R.'s. In all that pertains to his own affairs I see no reason to regard the Indian villager as in the least inferior to his English counter- part. If England has been governed efficiently by kings who could not even sign their own names, I see no reason to fear for the issue of self-government in India. Educated men —both British and Indian—still have their function in India But in future they will have to be the servants, and not the masters, of the Indian peasant. REGINALD A. REYNOLDS.
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