HOW SHALL WE GOVERN INDIA? T HE tragedy of the deaths
of Sir Curzon Wyllie and Dr. Lalcaca has set many minds in England at work on the problem of India and her government, for Englishmen, in Cromwell's phrase, make a conscience of what they do. "Are we governing India wisely and well ? and, if not, what change ought to be made ? '
The best way of considering the question of our Indian Empire is to ask one or two plain questions, upon the answers to which our conduct ought to depend. The first of these in order, though not perhaps absolutely first in importance, is : Why are we in India ? The second is : What ought to be our prime object in governing the people of India ? The third : What are our best means of attaining that object ? Let us attempt, we will not say to answer these questions fully, for that is beyond human power, but to give some of the considerations which go towards supplying the answers.
In answer to the question, Why are we in India as the governing and dominant factor ? we may reply : We hold our dominant position in India because we supply exactly those forces, those influences, and those instruments which are required by India so that she may survive in the political sense and take her place as a well-ordered com- munity. Just as Voltaire said that if there were not a Deity he would have had to invent one, so one could understand a philosophic Hindu declaring that if the British had not existed they would have had to be invented.
India is net a country, but many countries. It is inhabited, not by one race, but by many races. It is subject not to one or two kindred religious influences, as Europe, for example, is subject to Christian influences of various kinds. On the contrary, it is subject to religious influences so diverse and so conflicting that the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics seem as nothing in comparison. Between the various forms of Brahminism —primitive, corrupt, and idealistic—Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and the pure paganism which still survives in India there are chasms wide and deep. And through them flows an "unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." But the simile is a bad one, for the real sea divides but to join, while this dread ocean is one which no spiritual power can command. Not even in language, law, or civil customs is there a nexus between the various peoples and races of India. Different languages and different customs exist side by side in permanent defiance and antagonism, for there is something in the moral climate of India which seems to make always for heterogeneity, never for homo- geneity. But though the differences are on so large a scale in India, the peninsular continent is not divided into great patches within which there is homogeneity, or even similarity. The greater part of India is in streaks,—races, languages, and religions being interlaced and brocaded. If this were not enough, that strange, mysterious, and to Western notions horrible, institution of caste—an institution which can show a strength and tenacity greater even than that of religious faith—prevails to shatter the community into splinters and fragments. Caste breaks right across the Hinduism which is the faith of the majority of the people. It lays its icy hand upon those who should be united. It forbids for ever their amalgamation, and consecrates the appalling barriers it creates with the holiest observances of religion. An unsealed and unscaleable glacier ridge rises dread and malign between the priest, the soldier, and the artificer. We bays seen in Europe arietocracies, exclusive, aggres- sive, and insolent, who have kept their blood pure from any contamination with those they deem the common herd. But, at any rate, the common herd have not acquiesced ex anim, but only under compulsion. In India the man of lower caste, and even the outcast, acquiesces, with a spiritual abandonment which would be magnificent if it were not so slavish, in the claims of the exclusive Brahmin. Caste is supported as much from below as from' above. It is looked upon as the law of God and of Nature; that the mere touch of the lower caste should defile the sanctity of the higher. And so strangely and so strongly is caste interwoven with the life of India that those to whom the prejudice does not belong of right come by imitation under its yoke. The Moslem, the Jew, and the Parsee have borrowed from, and in a sense support, caste feeling ; while even that British exclusive-. ness of which no Indian really complains—it seems to him the most natural of all things—except when he desires to create prejudice in the minds of Englishmen in England, is possibly to some extent affected by caste example. Men find it much easier to be what we deem here cruelly exclusive when exclusiveness is the law of the land, which none questions or resents. The high-caste Brahmin whose tenet it is not to eat with any man who is not of his own caste can hardly resent the impossibility of social intimacy with Europeans.
But though destiny has made the population of India unhomogeneous in so astonishing a degree, geographical conditions have made India an essential political unit. The country, bounded as it is by the ocean on two sides, and by the great amphitheatre of mountains on the third, has always tended to fall under a single domination,—witness not only the Empire of the Moguls, but Empires and king- doms stretching back far beyond. From its situation— social, political, moral, and geographical—it is clear that the domination most likely to give Justice, peace, and bappi- ness to India is the domination of the impartial outsider, The man who can hold the balance fairly and evenly between the warring races and creeds, the man who will not take sides, but will do the work of governing fairly and justly, who will keep order and, prevent civil anarchy,—that is the man who is required and destined to rule in India. The British supply the thing wanted. Therefore the answer to the question, Why are we in India ? is—Because British rule gives India the thing which she needs most.
Let us take the next question. What should be our ideal and guiding principle in governing India ? Two answers have been given which at first seem so closely allied that one is almost tempted to say that it does not very much matter which of them is chosen. Yet, as a fact, there is that vast difference between them that there is between two lines which, when they are very short, look almost parallel, but which, if extended, are seen to diverge, and if greatly prolonged, have all the world between them. The first answer is that the object of British rule should be the government of India in the interests of the governed. The other answer is that the government of India should be so conducted as to fit the people of India for self-government. In our belief, it is the first answer that is the sound answer, and for these reasons. Those who choose the second answer are trying to apply to the East an ideal which belongs only to the West,—an ideal which the East has always repudiated. The East does not desire self-government, but, strange as it may seem to us, regards it with contempt. Though the Eastern brain is as acute as, or, as some say, more acute than, the Western, and though history spans for us a far larger space of time in the East than in the West, there ie no example of democratic self-government according to Western ideas to be found in that huge record. If the peoples of the East, whether in Chaldea, China, Persia, or India, had really desired the government of the people by the people for the people, it is unthinkable that the experiment would not have been made, and have succeeded. But of such experiment there is no report. The East has no doubt always desired government for the people, but the instrument has been sovereignty lodged in a single hand. The ideal is not the sovereign people, but the beneficent despot of Carlyle. Therefore in trying to make the people of India fit for self-govern- ment we are trying to fit them to do something which is cputrary to their nature and which they do not desire. What they do desire is good government through a benevolent despot, and such government British rule gives them. And here let us remember that if we are wrong, and if the people of India do in fact desire government of the people by the people for the people, the carrying out of our first ideal—that is, making the welfare of the governed our aim—is no impediment to self-government in the future. True devotion to the welfare of the governed must unconsciously end in preparing the people for self-government, if such should in the end prove to be their desire.
But it may be said that even if the people of India do not desire self-government, they desire government by people of their own kith and kin and not by aliens. Here is a capital error. Sections of the Indian community no doubt desire rule and dominance for themselves and would like to step into our shoes. But the other sections of the Indian community never desire to abet them in that course, except when, for example, a calculating politician argues that a short period of Moslem dominance might be useful or allowable as preparing the way for the permanent rule of the Hindu, or rather of the Brahmin. The government of the British is doubtless heartily disliked by every section of the community which has political aspirations of its own. Yet almost every Indian if he could be placed in the Palace of Truth would be forced to admit that the present system is the system which divides the Indians least. We shall not get gratitude, and we ought not to expect it, from the people of India, because our aim is to govern in the interests of the governed. Not unnaturally, perhaps, they are not going to thank us for doing what we declare is our plain duty. On the contrary, they are going to criticise us in every particular. Again, they make no secret of the fact that from many points of view alien good government is less interesting, less exciting, and less vital than those "wild enormities of ancient magnanimity" which, when remembered, stir the blood of the fighting races, and even win admiration from those who would be the victims of old, magnificent, and cruel despotisms could they he re-established. India lies becalmed under British rule, and a calm while it lasts seems dull and wearisome even to those who benefit most by it.
The aim, nevertheless, which we must keep steadily before us is government in the interests of the governed. Every development which is true to this principle is to be welcomed. Every development which goes contrary to it must be rejected. But if we are to govern in the interests of the governed, our first aim must be to hold the balance evenly between the different races, creeds, and strata of civilisation which divide India. This means, in practice, that though we must never take sides, we must never sacrifice the minority to the majority. The test of good government is the protection of minorities. And if we are to do this, we must not share the supreme government with any section of the Indian community, for to do so, however we may conceal the truth, must be to place one section above the others. Our practice should be to use to the best possible advantage native instruments in the work of government, and to give those native instruments appropriate dignity, power, and influence, but never to entrust them with the final word. They cannot be expected to use supreme power with the detachment of ourselves ; or at any rate, and this is much the same thing, the minority will never believe that a representative of the majority will show the detachment required.
It is because we hold so firmly this principle, the principle that we must never share the supreme government of India with any section of the natives, that we have protested against what seems superficially innocuous,—Lord Morley's and Lord Miuto's plan of placing a native upon the Governor-General's Council. The supreme Government of India is the Governor-General in Council. Therefore by placing a native on that Council we are sharing the government of India with the natives, or rather with one section of the natives. The first result, as we have seen, has been to throw the Mohammedan portion of the popula- tion into a condition of anxiety and agitation,—a condition which is sure to become worse. It must end either in our subjecting the minority still further, or else in a reaction, equally injurious, under which we shall permanently take sides with the Mohammedans, make them our special friends, and treat them as a privileged part of the Indian population. But to create a privileged minority would be more dangerous still, and more inimical to the true interests of India and of Britain than any oonrse of action that can be imagined. If we were once to teach the people of India that the Mohammedans were our special friends and that we had special obligations to them, we should have given a. deadly blow to the true basis of our Indian dominance,—the holding of the balance evenly between all sections of the population. We must give the Mohammedans of India their rights and protect them fully because they are a minority, not because they are our friends. Favouritism spells ruin in an Empire like that of India just as it does in a school.
If we share the supreme government of India with any section of the natives, the ultimate result is sure to be favouritism. Therefore all who care for the good government of India should desire to retrace the false step made by the appointment of a native upon the Council of the Governor-General. Let us, while we remain in India, keep before us the ideal of government in the interests of the governed. Let us remember, however, that if this principle is to be followed faithfully, though we may use, and ought to use, native instruments wherever possible, we must keep the supreme government in our own hands. We are trustees, and cannot abandon any portion of our trust.
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