Indian History and Politics
THE new volume of The Cambridge History of India is written almost solidly by members of the Indian Services, all but six being I.C.S., and presents an official view of what Mr. P. E. Roberts has called " the unromantic annals of modern India." They are unromantic only if we rigorously exclude all judgements but our own. To Indians they have been decades into which an exhilarating sense of growing unity and nationality and of pride in countrymen who have achieved world fame have poured almost Unendurable romance. But Indians make a negligible appearance in this volume ; the discussion of Indian social and religious and political move- ments is not such as to make it a first-hand authority, which it should have been—for its writers were part of many events they now bring to purview (as Gallic was of events in his day in Aehaia) The style is often a stodgy amalgam that sucks the sense down into obscurity. An average sentence is this, broken-backed in its repeated " before " : " One object of the earlier statutes requiring regulations to be registered in the Supreme Courts before becoming enforceable in the presidency towns had been to secure the criticism of the respective benches before the laws adopted by the Company's governments became universally valid."
Possibly all Defenders of the Faith (like their royal fore- runner) feel they must be majestic in print ; their pens become sceptres ! The perpetrator of that (p. 6) also asserts in the " Introduction " that the Mutiny was " India's first answer " to " beneficent changes "
" In ultimate analysis that movement was a Brahman reaction against influences which, given free play, would revolutionize the mental, moral, and social conditions of the country. It acted through the sepoy army because that was the only organized body through which Brahman sentiment could express itself ; it acted I trough the Bengal section of the sepoy troops because, that alone included numerous Brahmans."
" Ultimate analysis " generally yields several elements. There• etas annoyance at reforms imposed by the Government ; but even this cause of the outbreak you cannot state as crudely as in my quotation. And the "Brahman" explanation, however_ attractive to us to-day, cuts across the conviction of the soldiers who suppressed the Mutiny that it was " these ras- cally Diussubrians " (as the subaltern who was afterwards Lord Roberts wrote) who were mainly responsible, and also across the evidence furnished by the Paramount Power's absolute reversal of its annexation policy (Native States very. rarely have Brahman rulers). It, ignores the long train of gathering anger, through innumerable distressing or merely. unfortunate episodes of the First Afghan War and the Sind and Sikh Wars, and the revolt of Rajput and Maratha troops in regions far outside the main Mutiny areas ; ignores, too, the belief of such men as Sir Henry Lawrence that the loss of honourable careers in their own country was certain to bring revolt (see his words, a week before the Mutiny started, on the trivial possibilities left for Indians in our military service)..
Sir Wolseley Haig gives one paragraph to a problem of first importance and interest, on which we are entitled to ask, and need to have, expert military opinion : the " Indianization " of the Army and the justification for its slowness and the apparent unwillingness of the Paramount Power to implement. expectations (I do not say promises). Of questionable .state- inents, in language beneath n history published under a great university's auspices, there are many. The Afghan Wars were subjects of deep heart-searching to distinguished soldiers who took part in them, and left a legacy of _hatred across the border. Ought misgiving to be dismissed with mere bad temper in a long sentence packed with question-begging ?
" Nourished on the myth of Anglo-Indian aggressiveness, smopting without question the extravagance of Burke and the far less justifiable falsehoods of Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, Radical opinion perceived aggression behind every measure of Indian defence; in their eyes the frontier tribes were a race of wronged and noble savages, and the Afghans a nation rightly struggling to free itself from the meshes of intrigue cast around it by a malevolent Indian Government?'
That is bad writing, bad history, bad criticism. The reference to Macaulay's essay is unjust as well as irrelevant.
Good chapters star a disappointing book ; they are•generally on administration. Sir Patrick Fagan on the U.P., C.F., and - Punjab ; Mr. Butterworth on Madras ; Mr. C. C. Davies on
the North-West Frontier ; Sir Verney Lovett on Education sad Missions and social reform—themes he has made his own —are clear and helpful ; and Mr. G. E. Harvey is refreshingly incisive on the Conquest of Upper Burma. If only the JCS. would write as they talk in private
Political India is also practically an I.C.S. compilation, its attitude often suggesting that of prefects towards an unruly school they have just left. It suffers from cross-division ; the beginnings of the revolutionary movement, the Rowlatt Bill, Jalianwalabagh, are described repeatedly. There are slips of fact, such as the statement that " the temple of Kali gives its name to Calcutta " (the first vowels are not the same, except in English). And some chapters are excellent, and others are hurried and huddled up, or lazy. A very bad one is. Sir Evan Cotton's on " Some Outstanding Political Lenders." The book is cheap and space is gone, so I will ask the reader (if he is interested) to look at page 191, on Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, and decide for himself on that use of commas and inverted commas as instruments of criticism. But Sapru has a host of English friends, and his reputation will not suffer. Sir Evan Cotton's omissions are as striking as his judgements ; he does not think Mr. Jayakar worth men- tioning. A contrasting chapter is Sir Theodore Morison's on " Muhammadan Movements," a piece of writing marked by sincerity and affectionate understanding. Sir Patrick Fagan on the Sikhs, • Sir Darcy Lindsay on " Indians Overseas," write with knowledge and generosity. Mr. J. C. Molony ie delightfully free from cant and superiority, and has common sense on the Depressed Classes. EDWARD ThompsoN.
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