BOOKS.
LNDLAN CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.*
DR. VINCENT &ma has written a little book on Indian reforms, with reference to the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, which every one, and especially every Member of Parliament, ought to read. Dr. Vincent Smith is no politician, it is true, nor has he the boundless optimism, based on a profound ignorance of India, which is fashionable in some political circles. But he can point to thirty years' service as an Indian civilian and to a life-long study of Indian history, on which he is a high authority, as reasons why his criticisms are worth notice. Tim chief value of his book, as it seems to us, lies in its presentation of "certain disagreeable, inconvenient facts which are shirked or slurred over by the authors of the Report." One of these facts is the racial and religious diversity which has always characterized India ; another is the caste system. India, as a French writer has said, is a world—not one nation but many nations, which, before British rule was established, were usually at war with one another. Nearly fourfliths of the peoples of India profess Hinduism, in various forms, but "an immense mass of pre- Hindu beliefs and practices continues to exist," and renders the religious unity of Hinduism incomplete. More than a fifth, some sixty-six millions, are Mohammedans of various sects, who are more or lees influenced by Hinduism. Dr. Smith reminds • Indian Constitutional Reform Viewed in the Light of Illotory. By Vincent A. Smith. Loadoe: B. Milford. Os. Ed. net.]
us that, though the All-India Moslem League—" the organ of a few lawyers mostly of the Shia, sect," which is in the minority in India—joined the Indian National Congress in 1918 in putting forward a reform scheme, the ancient religious rivalry is not dead but sleeping. "The Hindu attack on the Musalman villages of the Patna, Gaya and Shahabad or Arrah districts in Address Bihar in 1917 was the most formidable outbreak of the kind recorded, so far as I know." Hindus of good position led the attacks on a hundred:Mohammedan villages, in which not even the women were spared—barely a year after the supposed re- conciliation between to two religious bodies. Similar riots occurred last year in Calcutta. But for the British Raj, they would occur every week.
Those who know Ireland can understand the Indian religious feuds. But caste, the fundamental institution of India, is so hopelessly alien to our Western minds that we have to make an effort to believe that it exists, still more to understand it. Dr. Smith says very truly that Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford look on caste " as a thing external capable of being laid aside," in their oracular remark that " everything that breaks down the barriers between communities, and makes men regard each other as neighbours and not as the wearers of some caste or creed insignia, hastens on the day when self-government within the Empire will be attained." Unfortunately, they are wrong. Western rank—" the caste of Vere de Vere "—can be and often is put aside. A British Peer, a French noble, even a Prussian junket., may, if he chooses, drop his title and become a commoner for all social purposes. But an Indian cannot break his caste witho'ut putting himself beyond the pale of society. Dr. Smith estimates that two hundred and fifty million Indians, including most of the Mohammedans, are " held firmly in the trammels of caste." There are about three thousand castes, or " water-tight social compartments," with innumerable sub-castes. A caste is, in the author's phrase, a group of families internally united by peculiar rules for the hereditary observance of ceremonial purity, especially in the matters of diet and marriage." The transfer of a person or family from one caste to another is im- possible. Seceders may found a new caste. Christian converts, for example, are regarded by Hindus as having formed a caste of their own, and cannot rid themselves of the caste idea. Caste the soul as well as the body of Hinduism." A Hindu may believe what he pleases,' se long as he eats the diet and marries the woman prescribed by the rules of the caste into which he was born." Further, "each group of castes has special duties and morals of its own." What is right for one may be wrong for another. The Thugs, for example, firmly believed that their goddess required them to strangle wayfarers, and ordinary Hindus respected without sharing theirhorrible creed. Caste has been unaffected by the spread of European education, contrary to the hopes enfertained by sanguine British writers before the Mutiny. It has been unaffected by railway travelling, as the pundits have invented excuses for the ceremonial pollution that takes place when persons of different castes are crowded together in a carriage. Indeed, the modern Hindu revival has strengthened the caste system. Its most essential feature, according to the sacred books, is the superiority of the Brahmin whom Mann called "the lord of all classes." The ten million Brahmins regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as possessing a special sanctity. An " untouchable " in Madras— there are eighteen millions of them—is thought to pollute a Brahmin if his shadow, falling on the public highway, crosses the Brahmin's path. Further, many castes are divided by hereditary feuds. Dr. Smith refers to an instance in the Tinnevelly district of Madras, where two castes still cherish a bitter quarrel that was raging in the fourteenth century. These are plain facts. How are we to reconcile them with Western democratic ideas, with the notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity which we assume unconsciously and erroneously to be shared by all mankind ? The Brahmin cannot and will not recognize the sweeper as a fellow-citizen with rights equal to his own.
Dr. Smith is by no means hostile to reforms of a practical kind. He regards the "goal of responsible government" as a distant vision, if not a mirage, but he thinks that India might have more "self-government," in the sense of an administration freed from excessive supervision. He points out that the Act of 183:3, which forbids discrimination against educated Indians, equally forbids discrimination against educated Englishmen, Scotsmen, or Irishmen, or Eurasians. He would take advantage of India's loyalty to the King-Emperor—a loyalty which accords with the most ancient Indian traditions of personal rule—and would appoint a Prince as Viceroy, who would deal with the Native States and foreign affairs, leaving the ordinary administration of British India to a Governor-General, Deputy. Governor-General, or Prime Minister. He would enlarge the Imperial Legislative Council, referring disputes between the elected majority and the Executive to the Secretary of State. Similarly, for each province the Government of India would
determine differences between the Provincial Governor and his Legislative Council. In regard to the franchise, he declares that communities and institutions must be specially represented. He discusses the "Diarchy" proposed for Provincial Councils as impossible and absurd. Local self-government for towns must, he observes, be qualified by considerations of public health. Indian municipalities have a poor record in this respect. Dr. Smith urges that the high standard of the Indian Civil Service must be maintained, and that if the opportunities of promotion to high office are curtailed or abolished, as some interested parties suggest, the Service will no longer attract our ablest young men. But all these questions must be considered in the light of the facts of Indian life. The main objection to the Montagu-Chelmsford Report is that its authors deliberately ignore these facts, and propose to build up a European Constitu- tion for India where the foundations are not laid and cannot be laid. Wewonder how many people realize that the dearest wish of the Hindus is a law to prohibit the slaughter of cows. That simple fact is a measure of the profound difference between the civilization of India and the civilization of Europe, which the Secretary of State and the Viceroy profess to regard as similar, if not yet wholly identical.
Previous page
