India in Revolution
Br SIR FRANCIS YOUNGIICSBAND.
THAT India is in revolution is the startling discovery just made by Fleet Street. Certainly since the War, and more especially since an alien Statutory Commission has been parading round India making recommendations for its future, the pace of revolution has increased, and this movement has become more obvious to the naked eye. But for at least thirty years India has been in revolution. And since the War there are very few countries which are not. Assuredly, this country is not one of those few. So we had better settle down to the fact that a full-blown revolution has been going on in India ever since Indians began to come over in Europe and America in large numbers and since the Japanese War with Russia. The Great War has only accelerated what was already in process.
India is in revolution. But there is no reason on that account to talk about the situation there as " staggering imagination " and to make the public's flesh creep by telling them that India is " heading for catastrophe." Any fool knows that in every country at the present time—France, Germany, Italy, even the United States—those responsible for Government have to be on the guard against violence in revolution. But that India is in revolution is in itself no disaster. It is, indeed, the very thing we have been working for these hundred years past.
For with what other object did we deliberately educate the Indians and associate them with us in the administration and in the Law Courts in higher and higher positions, take them on to the Executive Councils of the Viceroy and Governors, give them seats on Imperial Conferences and on the League if Nations, declare that responsible self-government was the goal of our policy in India, and set up miniature parliaments as a first step in that direction ?
For a century we have been trying to fit India to govern herself, and if she now clamours for self-government why should we be staggered when the goal of all our efforts is just in sight ? The reason given is because we fear that if we loosen our hold on India she will lapse into the chaos we now see in China. There is that risk. It requires no great intelligence to see that much. But who will be most conscious of it, we or the Indians ? Are the Indians all fools ? Have the Ruling Princes and Ministers who are here for the Conference no sense of responsibility for the fate of their own country ? Have we any greater stake in India than they have ? Surely, we may trust these grown-up Indians to have sense enough not to plunge India into disaster ! In the face of danger Indians are far more prone to shun than seek responsibility. And when it comes to the actual occasion one can hardly imagine responsible Indians demanding a premature withdrawal of the protecting hand of the British Empire.
And if an ardent spirit of nationhood is flaming up within India what more excellent thing could we desire ? We could not wish that she should remain for ever as dull and subservient as she was a hundred years ago when our administrators were complaining that they could not get the Indians to stand up for their rights and it was impossible, therefore, to make any progress. Now in its first fresh exuberance the new national spirit may be overflowing. But what present excess there is, is due more to the irritant of the Statutory Commission. What country would not be excited if a Commission of foreigners were going round adjudicating on its destiny ? And because there is a temporary excess of feeling we need not infer that there is anything fundamentally bad in the situation and that we are heading for catastrophe. We must be a good deal cooler in our judgment than that. We must recognize that the whole world is in revolution, and that the revolution in India is only part of this world- revolution. The rise of a national spirit in India is a beautiful and a splendid thing—a thing to be encouraged- 11! one and only thing that can make India—and make her free and noble.
For the present what India mainly wants is standing position in the world. That position we can neither give nor withhold. Indians have to make it for themselves. But we can be blind or awake to what they are and what they have achieved. We may incur the derision of the world by blindness to any other good quality than political or business capacity or love of sport. Or we can win esteem both for India and ourselves by showing that experts as we are in the art of government, we yet have eyes for those finer qualities which Indians so abundantly display—devotion to high ideals, love of philosophy and religion, quick intelligence, and incomparable manners.
We have now in London a group of the ablest men in India all animated by this new national spirit. Let us catch it from them, and with that practical conunon sense and political sagacity for which we arc renowned let us make for it a living laxly through which it may find expression. This will be a delicate operation, for national spirit is explosive material. But it has in it an ardour and devotion which is of priceless value if duly handled.
Let us, then, make these Indian Princes and statesmen feel that our main object is not to cling to dominion as a dog to his bone, but to help them find a means of expressing a national spirit which we welcome. Dominion was never our object in going to India. And now that Indio is beginning to feel her nationhood we want to help her attain it to the full. The day on which she can govern herself will he the day of our greatest pride. For in that day we shall have achieved our goaL The Conference can only suggest the main lines, not decide in detail the new Constitution for India. But it can generate the spirit in which it should be worked out by the responsible Government, submitted to Parliament and therein debated. And if the Conference can show Indians that their goal is our goal, and if Indians, on their side, are ready to profit by our wide experience of affairs, then it will have been greatly worth while.
The crux will be found in maintaining a strong central Government while yet gradually transferring responsibility and power from British to Indian hands. But, however difficult and delicate the operation, a way must forthwith be found of giving India from this time onwards the means of shaping her own destiny as freely as Canada and Australia were able to fashion theirs. The future of India must be in her own hands.
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