HINDUS AND MOHAMMEDANS.
A WONG the invaluable articles on Indian unrest which Cll. the Times special correspondent has been sending home for the last few weeks there are two which stand a little apart from the rest, and admit, therefore, of separate treatment. They are those which deal with the position • and feeling of the Indian Mohammedans. At first sight this may seem to have little connexion with the subject of Indian discontent, and yet it is directly affected by the • measures recently taken in view of that discontent. The main difficulty which the question presents is the old puzzle,—how to deal equal justice between majorities and minorities. In India, however, this difficulty assumes gigantic proportions. According to Whitaker's Almanack the Mohammedans form only twenty-one per cent. of the total population. But this twenty-one per cent. means a total Mohammedan population of sixty-two and a half millions,—a little more than that of the German Empire. Clearly this is too large a number to be likely to submit patiently to the application of Mr. Birrell's maxim, "Minorities must suffer." To prevent their suffering is one of the reasons which justify our holding India. We know that our withdrawal would be the signal for a war of races which would be none the less disastrous to the whole continent because the first sufferers by it would be the very people who are now • raising an outcry against British rule. How are we to legislate, how are we to administer, in view of such a con- catenation as this ? The difficulty is not merely one of • theory. We have already made acquaintance with it in • practice. We have introduced Western methods of educa- tion into India, and we have given considerations connected • -with education the same importance there that we give them . in our own country. The direct result of this policy has . been to place the Mohammedans at a great disadvantage as compared with the Hindus. "At the present day," says the Times correspondent, "the vast majority of Indians ,employed in every branch of the Government service are Hindus, and this majority is entirely out of proportion to the numerical preponderancy of the Hindu community." It may be said that, however unfortunate this disproportion may be, it is inevitable. At home Government appointments depend for the most part on the results of examinations. Ara we, in making our Indian appointments, to depart from the principle, "Let the best man win " ? Certainly not. The success of our administration is largely dependent on the observance of this rule. But "the • best man" is a term of many meanings, and the man who comes out highest in an examination is not always the man who is best fitted to administer a district in • which racial or religious difficulties may at any moment start • into dangerous prominence. Promptness, decision, cool- , ness of head, quickness in seeing what must be done on the instant, are the qualities which posts of this kind demand, and they have nothing to do with the literary facility and the quick assimilation of ideas from books which stand a man in good stead in the examination room. No doubt we make this room the nursery of our Civil Service at home. But to insist on this parallel is to ignore the history of the . examination system. It was not applied over the vast field of our administrative system with any hope that it . would give us geniuses for clerks. The experienced officials who arranged that the distribution of subordinate offices should be regulated by the paper-work of those who competed for them were under no delusions as to what they were doing. They were well aware that geniuses are not unearthed by examinations, and that if they were they might have no special qualifications for the tasks set them. With us the object of the whole system was to abolish the heartburnings and the corruption which attend patronage on a great scale. That it has done this is the real justification of the conditions of appointment that have so long been established, but it does not follow that this justification will have equal force in wholly different circumstances. In India it makes adaptability, suppleness, and. prematurely • developed capacity the qualifications for ruling men, and as a consequence of this we have the figures quoted by the Times correspondent. "According to the last Census, the Hindus of Bengal (which was then unpartitioned), though only twice as numerous as the Mohammedans, held 1,235 higher appointments under Government as against only 141 held by Mohammedans." Added to this, the head clerks "are almost always Hindus and alone have direct -access to the English superior officers." The belief that the Hindus use the opportunities thus afforded to pre- judice the superior officers against their Mohammedan subordinates may be quite unfounded ; but it is not sur- prising that where race-hatred is an active force, and one race has an official preponderance over the other which bears no relation to its numerical preponderance, suspicions of this kind are easily generated and widely distributed. Nor is it only in the public service that this inequality prevails. It exists also at the Bar, in the Press, and generally in all the liberal professions. Education, in par- ticular, "has passed very largely from our own hands into those of Hindu teachers." These results are probably inevitable, as they are due to the natural connexion between the characteristic Hindu gifts and professional success. But this is only the more reason for recruiting the Government service on a different principle and by other methods.
One error to which Englishmen are liable when legis- lating for India has already been committed and already amended. The Indian Councils Act was originally based on what to Englishmen seems a simple rule of justice. The populations of India, were to be represented in a rough proportion to their respective numbers. It was a natural error, for to give a man a vote is the universal English remedy for all the ills to which political flesh is liable. Let him be represented, let him have some one to speak for him in Parliament, and he will be safe against all injustice except that which comes from a deliberate intention to do him wrong. This assumption may yet turn out to be over-confident even where Great Britain is concerned, but in India its possible mischief has already been harvested. It rests on the supposed desire of all classes to deal justly with each other when once they know what justice demands of them. The discovery may take them a long time, but it is certain to be made, and thus in the end all will come right. This is a true prediction where this desire really exists, but as yet there is hardly a trace of it in India. "The animosity," says the Times correspondent, "which has always existed between the Mohammedans and the Hindus, especially amongst the lower orders, has been a constant source of anxiety to Indian administrators The danger must be enormously heightened if one community begins to believe that the other community is compassing deep- laid schemes for the promotion of its own ultimate asc,endency." As long ago as 1893 the Bombay Government reported an uneasy feeling among Moham- medans. They and their religion needed some special protection. "That uneasy feeling has gradually ripened since then into a widespread and deep-rooted convic- tion." Nor can it fairly be described as an unreason- able conviction. Since Hindu nationalism has taken its present militant aspect the Mohammedans have shared in the unpopularity of the English. They have not been the objects of such violent attack, but this has only been a question of opportunity. What the Mohammedans fear is that the Hindus, by means of the position they already hold in the Government service, by their immense superiority in point of numbers, and by the growing disposition of the Imperial Parliament and of English parties to make this superiority the groundwork of Indian administration, will become the de facto rulers of India. It is of the highest importance that nothing should be done to encourage, or seem to encourage, this mischievous impression. The Times correspondent rightly insists that "at no time since we have ruled India has greater circum- spection been needed in holding the balance between the two communities," and for this purpose it is of the first necessity that we should be very slow to delegate our authority to others. To entrust the government of sixty millions of Mohammedans to two hundred millions of Hindus would be to make India once more a. theatre of internecine strife. There is no fear of our doing this openly and of deliberate purpose. But the mischief of a step does not depend on its being taken with knowledge and intention. It may be just as disastrous when it is taken from carelessness, from good nature, or from an obstinate adherence to phrases which have no meaning outside the country in which they had their origin.
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