BENGALI BRITONS.*
No one who has any practical experience of public affairs will' deny the value of sentiment in administration. Still less can anyone who knows modern India deny that His Majesty the King-Emperor was right in asserting that the principal need' of the country is a community of sentiment, a common loyalty to public ideals between rulers and ruled. At first sight Mr. Mallik's diffuse and prolix book has the air of being a- useful contribution to a real rapprochement between natives of India and the administration of the country. Mr. Mallik is • right in claiming for his fellow-countrymen the title of Britons • of the Greater Britain, and in demanding for them the just consideration due to elves Britannia. Of himself he speaks with a touch of perfectly proper pride as "a Briton not born though bred in Britain." Not otherwise have many English- men born in India. or long residents in the East a very real love for the land of their adoption, a hearty desire to bring about lasting comprehension and sympathy between the two races whose fortunes are indissolubly linked together. But, with every desire to be just to Mr. Mallik's good intentions, we must reluctantly say at once that his sentimentality and mild armchair philosophy will not lead to kinder comprehension, for reasons which will, we think, be obvious when we come to quote from his ultimate conclusions and practical proposals He is at much pains to show that loyalty is not inconsistent with frank criticism of existing institutions. Unluckily - destructive criticism is easy for us all. It is especially easy for the voluble and fluent educated Bengali, and Mr. Mallik-, like most of his race, confines his criticism to the doings and opinions of the European element in the administration of India.
If we had to judge by his book alone, we should be com.
• A Study is Ideals Great Britain and India. By bLmmath C. MOM. London: T. Fisher Calvin. [10e. 65. net.] Felled to think that the Government of India was a some- what brutal and vulgar tyrauny. To an enlightened and benevolent " tyranny " as such, Mr. Mallik as a theoretic philosopher has no particular objection. He even hints that he would like the King to take up the attitude of a strong personal ruler of India. That would at least compel the European members of the India Civil Service to bide diminished heads, and would give the "Britons" beyond the seas the opportunity to display the moral and civics virtues which our author thinks they possess. He is evidently quite unaware that Indian members of the Service, if they have only ordinary talent and industry, far from being suppressed and snubbed, have brighter prospects of distinction than their European brother-officers. Mr. Mallik thinks, on the contrary, that the "Aryans of India" (a question- begging term at beet) are not allowed fair chances of displaying their merits, although "in moral life and teaching they have nothing to learn from the foreigner." It weakens his case terribly that he should carefully omit to note that the " Vedantic" neo- Hinduism out of which the Brahmo Samaj and other such bodies have arisen has to some extent replaced the crude Tantric beliefs of Bengal because Bengal has learned something from the foreigner, and especially from Christian systems of morals and conduct. He appears to hold quite seriously that the Valjana of Bengal is in some way the moral equivalent of Japanese Bushido. He tells us that "nothing in present-day Bengali life is more hopeful than the patriotic spirit that has been roused among Bengali womanhood by reactionary measures in recent years—a spirit that needs only careful fostering to enable the Bengali nation to attain its ideals." The "reactionary measures" in question seem to be the application of the penal law to the suppression of anarchism and political crime. What were the ideals of Bengal on August 12th, 1765, when the Diwani of the province was ceded to Clive by the Mogul Emperor, Shah Alain P The Mohammedan rulers of the country were effete and emasculated, it is true, but there was hopeless degeneration among ruled as well as among rulers.
Mr. Mallik's studies in sentimental ideals seem to have led him to neglect the much more practical and pregnant inquiries into the actual quality of the religions of Hindu Bengal now being conducted with scholarly diligence and enthusiasm by such real savants as the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University and Pandit Hara Prasad Shastri. We agree that, as between Europeans and Indians, "ignorance of each other and consequent misunderstanding appear to be giving way to mutual regard and confidence." But this result is not due to writers who, like .M.r. Mallik, argue ti at popular Hinduism, or even the Christianized neo-Hinduism of the educated classes, has proved its claim to be a fit basis for a civilized administration on modern lines, and to be, indeed, more likely to lead to a prosperous and happy social existence than the educational methods of Europe. It may be so, but the lessons of history, with their tale of the influences of environment on the Hindu temperament, bid 1113 be cautious before we assume that the ship of the Indian state can be navigated by a crew and officers whose training is on Hindu lines. That Hindus can do excellent service as part of a mainly Christian administration hardly needed proof. We know that Hindus, such as the famous Todar Mall, distinguished themselves in the Mohammedan admini- stration, when Moslem rule in India was at its prime, and had an august and vigorous tradition to which Hindu administrators could adapt themselves.
Mr. Mallik's book is written professedly in the interests of a better understanding between East and West. But if his intentions are good, his methods are not happily chosen. When he says that "Spain and Portugal . . . are suffering front the same malady as India—the domination of a privileged class, and its failure to provide decent and honest government for their peoples," we are bound to say that his diagnosis is patently wrong, and due to the precise prejudices which are the real obstacle to the hearty co-operation of East and West in India. He assumes throughout that the British administra- tion in India, if it is a necessary and inevitable fact, is a systematic oppression of a people struggling to be free. This prepossession colours the singularly few and simple sugges- tions Mr. Mallik has to make for the better government of the country. Four grievances he would immediately remove. The first of these is "partiality in the administration of justice between European and Indian." Those who have had charge of Indian districts in which there is a large European population have painful memories of the floods of criticism poured on them from Anglo-Indian and vernacular journals alike. Has anyone considered how surprisingly few are the instances of judieial scandals in such tracts as Assam, for instance, and how well the administration of justice there compares with what we have seen in the highest Courts, where trained lawyers have every oppor- tunity of exercising their influence ? Yet Mr. Mallik's sole suggestion is that "members of the Civil Service are to bold only executive posts, and . . . all judicial functions are to be placed, as in Britain (sic), in the hands of trained lawyers— experienced members of the British Bar and Indian Vakeels." Mr. Mallik, though he seems to be a resident in this country, is probably aware that in the East magisterial functions are a necessary condition of administrative power, and that a deprival of these would reduce district officers to a state of political impotence. We will give him the credit of supposing that he has omitted to consider a very technical and difficult question from this point of view. Another grievance (tnost unhappily worded, we think) is "personal ill-treatment, to which Indiana of all classes are subjected when they come into contact with any European on the railways or at other places." A statement so crude cannot and should not be answered. It carries its own condemnation in a book which professes to be written in the interests of good citizenship. Are we to suppose that insolence and ill-treatment are con- fined to one side only P The third grievance is "racial distinction in the Civil Services of the State." "The beat avail- able men should be chosen solely for their merit and not for their pliability." Mr. Mallik has probably noticed that seven Indians (including, we believe, three Bengalis) passed the Civil Service examination this year. That examination may or may not be a good test of merit, but it is difficult to believe that " pliability " is of any advantage to candidates. We might say much as to Mr. Mallik's fourth and last grievance, "inequality of opportunity in the military and naval service of the State." Here he has hit upon one of the most difficult unsolved problems in Indian administration. We wish we could say that he has suggested, or attempted to suggest, any acceptable solution.
The book professes to be an impartial survey of "individual and national life in the two countries with which the author is best acquainted—England and India." His picture of the moral and political condition of India is superficial and dangerously flattering : his account of Western life and morals is equally superficial and, shall we say P less flattering. Mr. Mallik has missed a great opportunity. What modern India requires is the bracing tonic of the plain truth about its social and moral state. Indian life is at present teeming with hopeful possibilities, and the progress obtained in Bengal alone in only a hundred and fifty years from a condition of seemingly hopeless decadence is nothing short of startling. But we must not shut our eyes to the means by which this progress has been attained, or to the possibility that if these means were withdrawn there would almost certainly be a relapse into obscurantism and social and political decay. Like other educated Bengalis, Mr. Mallik abounds in facile and wordy criticism of the existing order, while his constructive sug- gestions are so feeble as to be the beat answer to his demand that there shall be an immediate and wholesale withdrawal of European agency in the higher ranks of the Civil Service. We give him every credit for good intentions, and a desire to bring about a more cordial co-operation between Indians and the administration of their country. But we honestly believe that he has been misled by the exuberance of his own senti- mentality and has, all unwittingly, provided a curious object. lesson in the reasons which justify us, for the present, in retaining a firm hold of the rudder. His criticisms are much too facile and show little sense of the fact that, in the mis- leading guise of a high-flown study of ideals, he is picking holes in a great system which the world at large admits is the finest example of the government of a dependency known to history. If it behoves those entrusted with the task of ruling India to be modest, it is equally incumbent on their critics to remember what historical and social causes were the origin of the great edifice of administration which, under new auspices and at a new capital, will, we are convinced, render a good account of the trust committed to it.
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