An Indian Miscellany
some Aspects of Indian Foreign Trade, 1757-1893. By I. Durga Parshad. (P. S. King. 12s.)
Diversions of an Indian Political. By Lieut.-Col. R. L. . Kennion, C.I.E. (Blackwood. 10s. 6d.) Queer India. By H. George Franks. (Cassell. .8s. 6d.)
Ir is a pleasure to read a book on Indian economics as free from polemic as Dr. Parshad's. He is one of a growing band of Indians who write with such detachment as few historians of any country attain when handling national affairs. Stopping just before the fiercely controversial period inaugurated by Sir Henry Fowler's speech on the cotton duties in the House of Commons (1894), and in our day dominated by Mr. Gandhi and his spinning-wheel, he discusses the earlier course of British-Indian trade relations with a wealth of illustrative matter and documentation, doing more than his title promises, since he gives sixty closely-written pages to the half-century preceding Plassey. He touches on not a few points of angry argument, but keeps restraint throughout, and is able to remember that other ages had different ideas and different standards from those of to-day.
Two slips need correction. Sir Josiah Child and Sir John Child were not brothers, though the Dictionary of National Biography says they were, but were unrelated except in name and knavery. On page 149 he writes : " The first mention made of coffee as an article of trade between India and England is in a Revenue letter from the Government of Bengal, dated June 29th, 1826, to the Court of Directors.'. No doubt Dr. Parshad is thinking of coffee actually grown in India ; Arabian coffee was sent by the. East India Company to England as far back as 1658, the date of the first notified importation.
Against Diversions of an Indian Political I have two com- plaints, which are both perhaps mainly personal. First, the author is, of course, entitled to his political views (which are of the sort compendiously known as " Anglo-Indian "), but not so much or so often or on such slight provocation ; as the Americans say, they. " stick out like a sore thumb." He invites neglect when he opens with twenty pages of rambling tirade on the text of Mr. Kipling's " Hurree Chunder Mookerjee " ballad—not the last word on Indian political problems, even in Victoria's age—and adds a cool " Post- script " that he wrote this chapter six years ago (and, apparently, it calls for no revision in 1932 !) Secondly, there is (again, of course) a lot about shooting. This, too, is all right. Everyone knows that if Anglo-Indian society gets hold of you, there is no escape till you have got to the death of the last bear or tiger. (How wonderful is the insight of the poets ! Coleridge makes his Ancient Mariner hold up the Wedding Guest to tell him a shooting story—it would be that !) But I do object to being buttonholed for page after page of arguMent about the " sentimentalism " Of people who object to " blood sports," and to having the old, old reasoning brought out of how Nature herself is red in tooth and claw, how animals are less nervously strung than we are, that the hunter's instinct is in all of us, that to be logical you. Must be a vegetarian as well as object to mixing
death with your pleasures.
But all, books of Anglo-Indian reminiscences grumble about changed times and seditious people. Once in a while a reviewer must be allowed to grumble back I Now for the booki.'nrierits. Colonel Kennion is a .naturalist who knows about such beasts as the Indian rhinoceros and the different species of Indian deer, antelope, wild, sheep, wild goat, as well as shoots them. There are chapters on Nepal and the Terai jungles, crammed with information set out as well as Could be on subjects few-men are qualified to write about. He tells- of a Nepalese general deputed to bring him to a reception. " In some connexion our English county of porsetshire had been mentioned. ' All,' he murmured, Hardy's county.' " Colonel Kennion deserves literary immortality for inventing the phrase, " an ingurgitation of crocodiles " (as one says, " a pride of lions "). From a man of his frontier experience this comment is noteworthy : "The modem method of using aircraft and bombs seems to me to have all the worst features of the ` close border' system. Would it be unfair to compare it to a schoolmaster going up into a, gallery to ` buzz•' inkrita,st a room full of unruly schoolboys ? "
He is the first writer, so- far as I know, to envisage a great future for Nepal along other lines than military. Her rivers "are the potential source of unlimited power." Now that he has said this, it is obvious. Just as Jordan and Yarmuk have been tamed into purveyors of electricity, so some day— and more swiftly than we dream—those mighty Himalayan streams will be sinews of industrialism. By the way, on page 9, Akbar is accidentally debited with an act of cruelty which was perpetrated by Tuqhlak Shah, a very different man.
Queer India, compiled out of " a careful daily study of about two dozen newspapers," depresses. There is abundance of brutal reading about credulity and its exploiters, women tortured or burnt as witches, human sacrifices, religious frauds. I wish the book were better • documented ; date and source of information often would have made it, the first chapter especially, more effective. The best story is one of clever folk who adapted the methods of our English popular newspapers, running a competition with an entrance fee (of five rupees). Candidates had to see how often they could write Mr. Gandhi's name. The organizers, having collected their entrance fees, absconded without making any award. Queer India is full of interesting matter.
The Indian Evolution is an essay on the difficulties of England and India, by a distinguished Ceylon chief friendly to both. From his island home he obtains _a view of India that is detached yet neighbouring. His record of public service guarantees the disinterestedness of his opinions ; and we ought not to be indifferent to the judgement of such a man. A shrewd, kindly book, by a gentleman.
EDWARD THOMPSON.
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