AN INDIAN -ADfilINISTRA.TOR.*
annewn, homely Scottish common-sense is the most charac- teristic feature of Sir Andrew Fraser's amusing and interesting volume of reminiscences—a common-sense which is resolutely optimistic, and bids us refuse to despair of British rule in _India. For some twenty-seven years Sir Andrew filled many :and various posts, in the administration of the Central Provinces. He was a member of the Hemp Drugs Commis- sloe, and was president of the even more important Police Commission appointed liy Lord Curzon. With each of these he visited every Indian province. For some time he was 'Home Secretary to the Government of India, and, finally, he attained the climax of Si' Indian Civil Servant's ambitions, when be was appointed to be Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Obviously a busy, varied, and successful career. -Sir Andrew has described it with an agreeably candid appre- :elation of the fact that his experiences have been memorable, and,' in spite of inevitable risks and responsibilities, agree- able. In his own words, he "went out to India impressed with the dignity of our Service," and he is as frankly and pleasantly impressed with the dignity of the high and honoured post he occupied at the close of his career. "If the life is worthy," he says, " it also is unspeakably pleasure- able. To call it up before one's memory is itself a delight." Not a little of this delight is agreeably reflected in the writer's somewhat- crowded pages, and especially in what we regard as the most valuable part of his book, that which deals with memories of his life in the Central Provinces. It was here that he collected his materials for the chapters devoted to bis friends, English and Indian. We may be permitted to regret, however,, that his portraits (they are necessarily rather summary) are only of those whose careers have been as blameless and successful as his own. "There are others whom I could name," he says, " some of them, perhaps, not quite of the same high character as some of these—for in all countries our friends are human, and have their own weaknesses and defects." We could wish that Sir Andrew had not been so coy in treating of his less reput- able acquaintances, since it is precisely these that give a born ruler of men his opportunities. The beat schoolmaster is he who has a love for his naughty boys and only a chastened regard for the cautious souls who strive to be on- good terms 'with the authorities.. Nor do we quite understand Sir Andrew's dislike of Meredith Townsend's well-known chapter on the " Mental Seclusion of India." Sir Andrew himself says elsewhere that " the man who sinks to the level of the East is not the man for India, where he is expected to help to benefit and elevate its peoples." We all know what Mr. Kipling thinks of the too Indianate Briton, and it is obvious, surely, that only a rare :type of Englishman—an Alfred Lyall, fOr instance—can retain his own British character unimpaired, and yet, by sheer intuition and sympathy, can win the hearts and understand the aspirations of men of an alien creed and race. And, of course, the same is equally true of the average Indian. Indeed, Sir Andrew's own book is, in. a way, an example of Meredith Townsend's theme. The value of its earlier chapters is due ,to the fact that, at the beginning of his service, the author was in close touch with the people, could- speak their language, was versed in their customs, prejudices,• and social life. When he rose to the high and secluded dignity of Governor of Bengal, he had to acquire his opinions and information at second hand, and the part of his book which deals with these later experiences is much more open to friendly criticism than that which describes the varied incidents of a district officer's life in the Central Provinces. Here he records with much vigour and gusto his own personal experiences, and his narrative is full of human. interest. Perhaps.the most delightful pages are those which
. • Among Indian Bajohcand Eyots. By Sir Andrew H. L. Fraser, TS.C.S.I: Lonon: Seeley and Co. [18s. net.]
deal with sport, with tiger shooting, the stalking- of buffalo and bison, and the intense excitement which even a looker45n may find in the capture of wild elephants. As to his work on the Hemp Drugs Commission, Sir Andrew is curiously reticent. That Commission was a sortof corollary to the Opium Commission which Lord Brassey took out from this country. It seems to be generally admitted that the use of haschish and other hemp drugs is even more degrading and permanently mischievous than that of opium. Yet the Com- mission was unable to recommend the absolute prohibition of the sale and consumption of these drugs. Most Anglo-Indians know that such a prohibition would be impracticable ; yet, in view of a possible revival of agitation in this country, it might have been well if Sir Andrew had, however briefly, recorded the findings of the Commission. Of the doings of the Police Commission Sir Andrew writes very fully, and has much that is interesting to say. The police were, and to some extent still are, underpaid. Hence service in the force failed to attract men of good ability and high character. The Indian police were, in fact, much as the English police before Sir Robert Peel took them in band. Detective work was feeble, and, too often, placed too implicit a trust in confessions, by whatever means procured. Yet, in spite of all drawbacks, the pollee. did keep down crime and were a by-no-means insufficient instrument in the hands of capable magistrates. In this connection it is interesting to find that Sir Andrew is strongly opposed to the threatened removal of magisterial powers from district officers. Even in England, as he justly points out, Justices of the Peace exercise both judicial and executive functions. If dis- tinguished Anglo-Indians have occasionally deprecated the combination in India, it was in the days when district °Mari heard civil suits and appeals. Sir Andrew Fraser's account of the much-discussed partition of Bengal is hardly so well informed as we might expect. He has no difficulty in showing that this measure was the stalking- horse rather than the origin of political disaffection, and he proves, as Lord Curzon proved before him, that much of the opposition to it was due to misunderstanding. It is satis- factory, too, to know that the results of the adjustment of the boundaries between Assam and Bengal have been eminently satisfactory, and that even its most irreconcilable critics are beginning to admit that they were mistaken. But perhaps a better justification for what has proved BO conspicuous a success is to be found in the history of Bengal. In ancient times what is now. Eastern Bengal and Assam was the great kingdom of Kamarupa, described in the Mahabharata and the Puranas as one of the most powerful and prosperous of Indian realms. To this. succeeded, both in area and power, the empire of the Koch kings, of which the modern State of Kooh Bihar is the sole surviving fragment. The Brahmaputra Valley was wrested from the Koches by the Shan tribe, called. Ahoms, who gave it the name of Assam. Subsequently Bengal came under the sway of the Hindu Pal and Sen dynasties. Ballad Sen, the greatest of the indigenous Kings of Bengal, made Eastern Bengal into a separate province called Tanga:, and when his son, after one of the longest reigns on record, fled from the victorious arms of the Mahomedan invaders, he took refuge in Vikrampur in this eastern province, where, for a time, his descendants maintained a precarious independence. When the liussulmaiis conquered East Bengal in turn, they found a population mostly of Tibeto-Burmese origin, admitted to Hinduism, if at all, as members of the lowest and most despised castes. The gentry, landowners, and administrative classes were, for the most part, immigrants from Western Bengal who had followed the felt-awe of Hindu invaders. It was among the aboriginal classes that Islam was most successful in making converts, so that, at the present time, three-fourths of the population is Mahomedan. The latter have from the first welcomed a change which has given a new importance and prosperity to their country, to its ancient capital Dacca, and to its port Chittagong. The Hindu gentry, not unnaturally, gave their support to the opposition whose ablest and most powerful advocates were the lawyers in Calcutta, who feared that Eastern Bengal, and with it many of their best clients, might be transferred from the jurisdiction of the. Calcutta High. Court. Lord Curzon Might Well have claimed that he was merely following ancient precedent in restoring the old province of Vanga But the more modern history of the enlargement of Assiiii is. an even !more conclusive argument in .favour of the. change. Sir Andrew Eraser's statement of the case is that "it- was impossible to have an adequate force of acerb permanently settled in" so small a province as Assam, " and the consequence was that discipline was weak, and the officers did not take that interest in'their work which an officer ordinarily does in the work of his own Province." As a matter of fact, during the years 1881-87 Assam was under the vigorous rule of Sir C. A. Elliott, afterwards one Of -Sir Andrew Fraser's most -dis- tinguished predecessors in Bengal, and the very last man to allow any slackness of discipline. It was in Assam itself that the need for the enlargement of the Province was first felt and expressed. Nor can it be said that the officers then serving in Assam were in anyway inferior in character or ability to their contemporaries in other parts of India. One of them is now. Lieutenant-Governor. of Eastern Bengal, and the remarkable stiecess of his administration is admittedly due in large measure to men. who bad their training in Ailani under Sir C. A. Elliott and his successors.
• What -might perhaps be asked is whether the adjust- ment of boundaries between Assam and Bengal might not have been effected piecemeal and at an earlier date. The three Bengal districts of Sylhet, Cachar, and Goal- Para were partitioned from Bengal so long ago as 1874, with marked and undeniable benefit to their adininistration. Plans for the gradual annexation of the rest of the ancient province of Vanga were in existence, we believe, long before Lord Elgin left India. Why, it may fairly be asked, was it left to Lord Curzon to do, at one blow and at a time of considerable political irritation, what might more gradually and peaceably have been effected when the construction of .the Assam-Bengal Railway from Chittagong to Dibrugarlt made it impossible to defer much later a change which, as experience has shown, was bound to be beneficial to the administration, the commerce, the communications and even the social life of Eastern Bengal?
Sir Andrew,. Fraser's book deals with so .many and so various matters time it is difficult even to mention them all. Sonar of his most interesting pages are on the subject of Ohuiztian missions, on which be is, in his own person and by heredity, an acknowledged authority. He insists with much eatnestneseon the thesis that the traditional impartiality of the Indian Government does not involve any need on the part of its Christian officers to hold their faith in abeyance, or to refuse their aid and sympathy to Christian missionaries. He quotes striking instances to show that pious Hindoos under- stand and approve of piety on the part of Christian officials. On _political unrest, its causces and limitations, Sir Andrew can write with Imequalled experience. We presume that this is what he means when, in . discussing the subject,-he says, "1 must speak mainly of the part of India I know best—that is, of .Bengal." He can hardly intend his readers to understand that his knowledge of Bengal is greater than that derived from long and familiar acquaintance with life in the Central Provinces. It is pleasant to find that, in spite of experiences trying to the nerve of the most sturdy, Sir Andrew stoutly believes that the bulk of the people of Bengal are still firmly convinced of the advantages and necessity of British-rule. He takes the opportunity to speak with becoming gratitude and admiration of the young Maharajah of Burdwan, who risked his own life to save the Lieutenant-Governor from an
attempted assassination. • - .
The chapter which deals with the humours of administration reminds us that Sir Andrew has a reputation as a skilful rcieonteur. It is a pity that Indian Officials do not oftener pat on record the queer cases that have come -under their observation, many of them often giving a clue to rustic hinnan nature in the " tidussil." . We are not sure that this chapter was not the fittest-place 'for a long letter penned by Sir Andrew himself giving remarkably detailed instructions to an unnamed `"district officer for the training of a newly- arrived civilian entrusted to his charge. No doubt Sir Andrew smiled with grim and "pawky" humour when he committed-this.exhortation to the immortality of print. But we are fain to Wender how an official needing such instructions, even if they we're written with a partly humorous intention, came he entrusted with... the -charge of callow youth
at. alL . _
LAn a wholn, the l:51a k Janet -unwerthyrecord of a atrennons, capable, and benevolent administrative career. Sir, 'Andrew Fraser, to use his own words, has " made it -dear that It is not a mere land of exile." He lats-shown, in his dwn frank words and by implication, that India is "the scene in which a man finds his life-work—work honourable and delightful, the place where he has friends whcm he loves and ties which it is hard to sever." We can believe-that " its peoples and its ways became very dear to him." It is' to be bored that Scotch manses and English public schools will furnish India with many such rulers, energetic, kindly, Sympathetic, yet strong to repress crime and ill-doing. If Sir Andrew's retrospect is wistfully optimistic, his reminiscences show incidentally what are the difficulties that lie in the Way of good Indian adminis- tration, and how they can be successfully mei and overcome. The Briton's task in India grows in litany *ways more difficult, as a comparison of the earlier with the later chapters of the' book shows. But it also shows that the task can still be accomplished.
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