JUSTICE IN THE EMPIRE
Burma Trials. By Maurice Collis. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.) Tins book is an autobiography of three years of the author's life, 1928-31. But the daily events of his life were public events, and they are used to illustrate his argument. That argument is clothed, and rightly clothed, in modern termin- ology, but it really goes back to a scriptural teaching, so simple and true that it is usually overlooked ; and it is this—that the political reforms we have given India and Burma, and given none too graciously, will avail us nought without a change of heart.
We are shown some admirable instances of racial friction and misunderstanding, and we are shown them by a man whose duty it was to hold the scales evenly. Mr. Collis, a member of the Indian Civil Service, was District Magistrate of Rangoon. He played a part in the Rangoon Riots, in the murderous Gaol Mutiny, and in several of the other events he so vividly describes ; but the book really centres round the cases he tried. In India and Burma a District Magistrate wields much wider powers than a London stipendiary, and Mr. Collis, hitherto an administrative officer, was called upon to wield them during a period of racial tension. When he discharged two English business men who had not beaten, let alone beaten to death, a dead Burmese servant, he was lionised by their friends. But when he failed to sentence Mr. Sen Gupta, a Congress leader, to a substantial term of imprisonment for a mildly seditious speech, his popularity waned. And when he dared to give a subaltern in the Cameron Highlanders three months' gaol for speeding past the traffic lights and seriously injuring two Burmese ladies, the sentence was promptly commuted by the High Court and he himself, though extolled in the native Press, was sent back to administrative work, on promotion it is true, but none the less sent back. And subsequently, after further events in the usually uneventful district of Mergui, he was allowed to retire from the service before the end of his time.
It sounds contemptible, it was contemptible, though not always in the sense indicated. The idea that a race must at all costs maintain its prestige, an idea which does incalculable harm, is widespread among Englishmen in the tropics, but then it is widespread among other races, too. Other races, East as well as West, exhibit the herd instinct, and even in India and Burma the Asiatic is, far more often than people in England realise, the champion, the European the victim, of race preju- dice. Mr. Collis skilfully covers himself on this point, and he describes our own shortcomings with so many sympathetic allowances, with such a disarming air, that one would never suspect his book to be a piece of special pleading.
Special pleading would not matter, if only personal issues were involved. But public issues are raised. The book is announced as a " contribution to the philosophy of Empire," and it depicts the bureaucracy in Burma as tampering with the administration of justice, penalising a judge who chose to follow his conscience rather than the wishes of the executive. If this is the way justice is administered in our tropical dominions, the sooner people in England realise it the better. But is it the way ? Take Mr. Collis on his own ground. In the subaltern's trial, the law allowed the injured ladies to settle the case on receipt of adequate damages, with the court's consent ; Mr. Collis refused his consent, and deliberately sent the lad to prison, a sentence which, incidentally, involved cashiering, a sentence, moreover, which the local nationalists were eagerly awaiting. And he did this after sentencing Mr. Sen Gupta to a nominal term for sedition, in a trial which he regarded as farcical and during which he wished he could have had the accused to dinner Now sedition may be a ridiculous and rather mediaeval crime, but unfortunately India and Burma are rather mediaeval countries, and things which sound ridiculous here can be a grim reality out there. Mr. Sen Gupta's conduct was either seditious or it was not ; if it was, he should have been properly sentenced ; if it was not—or what is, on a known legal principle, the same thing, only trivially seditious—he should have been discharged. Mr. Collis' sentence was equivalent to a farthing's damages, and he himself calls it a slap in the face of the Crown. The view the Burma Government took of these matters was shared by the High Court and by the responsible leaders of the Bar ; and the fact that the European public took the same view on less worthy grounds does not lessen its validity. Even in England, where the independence of the judges is almost unique, it is the executive which appoints them, the executive which promotes them and a judge who—were such a thing conceivable—trimmed his judgements to suit the passing gust would find his career affected.
The legend that the executive interferes with the judiciary i.i India has an origin. In the days when Indians could seldom hope to rise above a miserable subordinate magistracy, and most of them were corrupt, the only way their superiors could bring them to their senses was by extra-judicial pressure, and to this extent the executive certainly intervened. But it never did so with men of any calibre, nor does it do so with the Indians and Burmans who are nowadays receiving their rightful place in the great services. The reviewer has discussed the point with magistrates of successive generations as far back as 1883, the year of the Ilbert Bill and the disgraceful agitation against Lord Ripon, with whom Mr. Collis modestly compares himself. These magistrates were primarily administrative officers and, feeling out of their depth when called upon to preside over trials of real magnitude, they wondered whether they would receive a hint about the line they were really expected to take by the Government which had formally instituted the prosecution, the Government on which their careers depended. Like Mr. Collis, they received no guidance beyond the speech for the Crown in open court. Some of them had thrown out the cases, but they received no sign of displeasure and their careers were unaffected. It might have been different had they played to the gallery.
FRANCIS GOWER.
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