The Nationalist Movewment in India
by Jabez T. Sunderland
The Atlantic
October 1908
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm
THE Nationalist Movement in India may well interest Americans.
Lovers of progress and humanity cannot become acquainted with it
without discovering that it has large significance, not only to
India and Great Britain, but to the world. That the movement is
attracting much attention in England (as well as awakening some
anxiety there, because of England's connection with India) is well
known to all who read the British periodical press, or follow the
debates of Parliament, or note the public utterances from time to
time of Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley), the British Secretary of
State for India.
What is this new Indian movement? What has brought it into
existence? What is its justification, if it has a justification?
What does it portend as to the future of India, and the future
relations between India and Great Britain?
In order to find answers to these questions we must first of all
get clearly in mind the fact that India is a subject land. She is a
dependency of Great Britain, not a colony. Britain has both
colonies and dependencies. Many persons suppose them to be
identical; but they are not. Britain's free colonies, like Canada
and Australia, though nominally governed by the mother country, are
really self-ruling in everything except their relations to foreign
powers. Not so with dependencies like India. These are granted no
self-government, no representation; they are ruled absolutely by
Great Britain, which is not their "mother" country, but their
conqueror and master.
As the result of a pretty wide acquaintance in England, and a
residence of some years in Canada, I am disposed to believe that
nowhere in the world can be found governments that are more free,
that better embody the intelligent will of their people, or that
better serve their people's many-sided interests and wants, than
those of the self-ruling colonies of Great Britain. I do not see
but that these colonies are in every essential way as free as if
they were full republics. Probably they are not any more free than
the people of the United States, but it is no exaggeration to say
that they are as free. Their connection with England, their mother
country, is not one of coercion; it is one of choice; it is one of
reverence and affection. That the British Government insures such
liberty in its colonies, is a matter for congratulation and
honorable pride. In this respect it stands on a moral elevation
certainly equal to that of any government in the world.
Turn now from Britain's colonies to her dependencies. Here we find
something for which there does not seem to be a natural place among
British political institutions. Britons call their flag the flag of
freedom. They speak of the British Constitution, largely unwritten
though it is, as a constitution which guarantees freedom to every
British subject in the world. Magna Charta meant self-government
for the English people. Cromwell wrote on the statute books of the
English Parliament, "All just powers under God are derived from the
consent of the people." Since Cromwell's day this principle has
been fundamental, central, undisputed, in British home politics. It
took a little longer to get it recognized in colonial matters. The
American Colonies in 1776 took their stand upon it. "Just
government must be based on the consent of the governed." "There
should be no taxation without representation." These were their
affirmations. Burke and Pitt and Fox and the broaderminded leaders
of public opinion in England were in sympathy with their American
brethren. If Britain had been true to her principle of freedom and
self-rule she would have kept her American colonies. But she was
not true to it, and so she lost them. Later she came very near
losing Canada in the same way. But her eyes were opened in time,
and she gave Canada freedom and self-government. This prevented
revolt, and fastened Canada to her with hooks of steel. Since this
experience with Canada it has been a settled principle in
connection with British colonial as well as home politics, that
there is no just power except that which is based upon the consent
of the governed.
But what are we to do with this principle when we come to
dependencies? Is another and different principle to be adopted
here? Are there peoples whom it is just to rule without their
consent? Is justice one thing in England and Canada,and another in
India? It was the belief that what is justice in England and Canada
is justice everywhere that made Froude declare, "Free nations
cannot govern subject provinces."
Why is England in India at all? Why did she go there at first, and
why does she remain? If India had been a comparatively empty land,
as America was when it was discovered, so that Englishmen had
wanted to settle there and make homes, the reason would have been
plain. But it was a full land; and, as a fact, no British emigrants
have ever gone to India to settle and make homes. If the Indian
people had been savages or barbarians, there might have seemed more
reason for England's conquering and ruling them. But they were
peoples with highly organized governments far older than that of
Great Britain, and with a civilization that had risen to a splendid
height before England's was born. Said Lord Curzon, the late
Viceroy of India, in an address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar
in 1901: "Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India]
while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and
while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India
has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the
religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the
universe." It is such a land that England has conquered and is
holding as a dependency. It is such a people that she is ruling
without giving them any voice whatever in the shaping of their own
destiny. The honored Canadian Premier, Sir Wilfred Laurier, at the
Colonial Conference held in London in connection with the
coronation of King Edward, declared, "The Empire of Rome was
composed of slave states; the British Empire is a galaxy of free
nations." But is India a free nation? At that London Colonial
Conference which was called together for consultation about the
interests of the entire Empire, was any representative invited to
be present from India ? Not one. Yet Lord Curzon declared in his
Durbar address in Delhi, that the "principal condition of the
strength of the British throne is the possession of the Indian
Empire, and the faithful attachment and service of the Indian
people." British statesmen never tire of boasting of "our Indian
Empire," and of speaking of India as "the brightest jewel in the
British crown." Do they reflect that it is virtually a slave empire
of which they are so proud; and that this so-called brightest jewel
reflects no light of political freedom?
Perhaps there is nothing so dangerous, or so evil in its effects,
as irresponsible power. That is what Great Britain exercises in
connection with India -- absolute power, with no one to call her to
account. I do not think any nation is able to endure such an ordeal
better than Britain, but it is an ordeal to which neither rulers of
nations nor private men should ever be subjected; the risks are too
great. England avoids it in connection with her own rulers by
making them strictly responsible to the English people. Canada
avoids it in connection with hers by making them responsible to the
Canadian people. Every free nation safeguards alike its people and
its rulers by making its rulers in everything answerable to those
whom they govern. Here is the anomaly of the British rule of India.
Britain through her Indian government rules India, but she does not
acknowledge responsibility in any degree whatever to the Indian
people.
What is the result? Are the interests and the rights of India
protected? Is it possible for the rights of any people to be
protected without self-rule? I invite my readers to go with me to
India and see. What we find will go far toward furnishing us a key
to the meaning of the present Indian Nationalist Movement.
Crossing over from this side to London, we sail from there to India
in a magnificent steamer. On board is a most interesting company of
people, made up of merchants, travelers, and especially Englishmen
who are either officials connected with the Indian Government or
officers in the Indian army, who have been home on furlough with
their families and are now returning. We land in Bombay, a city
that reminds us of Paris or London or New York or Washington. Our
hotel is conducted in English style. We go to the railway station,
one of the most magnificent buildings of the kind in the world, to
take the train for Calcutta, the capital, some fifteen hundred
miles away. Arrived at Calcutta we hear it called the City of
Palaces; nor do we wonder at the name. Who owns the steamship line
by which we came to India? The British. Who built that splendid
railway station in Bombay? The British. Who built the railway on
which we rode to Calcutta? The British.
To whom do these palatial buildings belong? Mostly to the British.
We find that Calcutta and Bombay have a large commerce. To whom
does it belong? Mainly to the British. We find that the Indian
Government, that is, British rule in India, has directly or
indirectly built in the land some 29,000 miles of railway; has
created good postal and telegraph systems, reaching nearly
everywhere; has established or assisted in establishing many
schools, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions of public
benefit; has promoted sanitation, founded law courts after the
English pattern, and done much else to bring India into line with
the civilization of Europe. It is not strange if we soon begin to
exclaim, "How much are the British doing for India! How great a
benefit to the Indian people is British rule!" And in an important
degree we are right in what we say. British rule has done much for
India, and much for which India itself is profoundly grateful.
But have we seen all? Is there no other side? Have we discovered
the deepest and most important that exists? If there are signs of
prosperity, is it the prosperity of the Indian people, or only of
their English masters? If the English are living in ease and
luxury, how are the people of the land living? If there are
railways and splendid buildings, who pay for them? and who get
profits out of them? Have we been away from the beaten tracks of
travel ? Have we been out among the Indian people themselves, in
country as well as in city? Nearly nine-tenths of the people are
ryots, or small farmers, who derive their sustenance directly from
the land. Have we found out how they live? Do we know whether they
are growing better off, or poorer? Especially have we looked into
the causes of those famines, the most terrible known to the modern
world, which have swept like a besom of death over the land year
after year, and which drag after them another scourge scarcely less
dreadful, the plague, their black shadow, their hideous child? Here
is a side of India which we must acquaint ourselves with, as well
as the other, if we would understand the real Indian situation.
The great, disturbing, portentous, all-overshadowing fact connected
with the history of India in recent years is the succession of
famines. What do these famines mean ? Here is a picture from a
recent book, written by a distinguished British civilian who has
had long service in India and knows the Indian situation from the
inside. Since he is an Englishman we may safely count upon his
prejudices, if he has any, being not upon the side of the Indian
people, but upon that of his own countrymen. Mr. W. S. Lilly, in
his India and Its Problems,writes as follows: --
"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century,
18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the
year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress --
5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In
the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, --
a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population
perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget my own
famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after
morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human
corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured
by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, 'the joy
of the world,' as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable
sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them,
wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children,
their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly
wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin
remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of
loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had
been conceived and born and nurtured -- they haunt me still." Every
one who has gone much about India in famine times knows how true to
life is this picture.
Mr. Lilly estimates the number of deaths in the first eight decades
of the last century at 18,000,000. This is nothing less than
appalling, -- within a little more than two generations as many
persons perishing by starvation in a single country as the whole
population of Canada, New England, and the city and state of New
York, or nearly half as many as the total population of France! But
the most startling aspect of the case appears in the fact that the
famines increased in number and severity as the century went on.
Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of
twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five
famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the
second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an
estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were
six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the
last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an
estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to
26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over
6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles.
What is the cause of these famines, and this appalling increase in
their number and destructiveness? The common answer is, the failure
of the rains. But there seems to be no evidence that the rains fail
worse now than they did a hundred years ago. Moreover, why should
failure of rains bring famine? The rains have never failed over
areas so extensive as to prevent the raising of enough food in the
land to supply the needs of the entire population. Why then have
people starved? Not because there was lack of food. Not because
there was lack of food in the famine areas, brought by railways or
otherwise within easy reach of all. There has always been plenty of
food, even in the worst famine years, for those who have had money
to buy it with, and generally food at moderate prices. Why, then,
have all these millions of people perished? Because they were so
indescribably poor. All candid and thorough investigation into the
causes of the famines of India has shown that the chief and
fundamental cause has been and is the poverty of the people, -- a
poverty so severe and terrible that it keeps the majority of the
entire population on the very verge of starvation even in years of
greatest plenty, prevents them from laying up anything against
times of extremity, and hence leaves them, when their crops fail,
absolutely undone -- with nothing between them and death, unless
some form of charity comes to their aid. Says Sir Charles Elliott
long the Chief Commissioner of Assam, "Half the agricultural
population do not know from one halfyear's end to another what it
is to have a full meal." Says the Honorable G. K. Gokhale, of the
Viceroy's Council,"From 60,000,000 to 70,000,000 of the people of
India do not know what it is to have their hunger satisfied even
once in a year."
And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William
Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book
entitled "Prosperous" India,shows from official estimates and
Parliamentary and Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average
daily income of the people of India in the year 1850 was estimated
as four cents per person (a pittance on which one wonders that any
human being can live), in 1882 it had fallen to three cents per
person, and in 1900 actually to less than two cents per person. Is
it any wonder that people reduced to such extremities as this can
lay up nothing? Is it any wonder that when the rains do not come,
and the crops of a single season fail, they are lost? And where is
this to end? If the impoverishment of the people is to go on, what
is there before them but growing hardship, multiplying famines, and
increasing loss of life?
Here we get a glimpse of the real India. It is not the India which
the traveler sees, following the usual routes of travel, stopping
at the leading hotels conducted after the manner of London or
Paris, and mingling with the English lords of the country. It is
not the India which the British "point to with pride," and tell us
about in their books of description and their official reports.
This is India from the inside, the India of the people, of the men,
women, and children, who were born there and die there, who bear
the burdens and pay the taxes, and support the costly government
carried on by foreigners, and do the starving when the famines
come.
What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian
people? Said John Bright, "If a country be found possessing a most
fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production,
and, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme
destitution and suffering, the chances are there is some
fundamental error in the government of that country."
One cause of India's impoverishment is heavy taxation. Taxation in
England and Scotland is high, so high that Englishmen and Scotchmen
complain bitterly. But the people of India are taxed more than
twice as heavily as the people of England and three times as
heavily as those of Scotland. According to the latest statistics at
hand, those of 1905, the annual average income per person in India
is about $6.00, and the annual tax per person about $2.00. Think of
taxing the American people to the extent of one-third their total
income! Yet such taxation here, unbearable as it would be, would
not create a tithe of the suffering that it does in India, because
incomes here are so immensely larger than there. Here it would
cause great hardship, there it creates starvation.
Notice the single item of salt-taxation. Salt is an absolute
necessity to the people, to the very poorest; they must have it or
die. But the tax upon it which for many years they have been
compelled to pay has been much greater than the cost value of the
salt. Under this taxation the quantity of salt consumed has been
reduced actually to one-half the quantity declared by medical
authorities to be absolutely necessary for health. The mere
suggestion in England of a tax on wheat sufficient to raise the
price of bread by even a half-penny on the loaf, creates such a
protest as to threaten the overthrow of ministries. Lately the
salt-tax in India has been reduced, but it still remains well-nigh
prohibitive to the poorer classes. With such facts as these before
us, we do not wonder at Herbert Spencer's indignant protest against
the "grievous salt-monopoly" of the Indian Government, and "the
pitiless taxation which wrings from poor ryob nearly half the
products of the soil."
Another cause of India's impoverishment is the destruction of her
manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first
appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of
the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the
British to her shores. The source of her wealth was largely her
splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls,
muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind,
jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over
Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of
Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part
they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India
in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly
depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them
have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the
already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the
explanation? Great Britain wanted India's markets. She could not
find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was
supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be
sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she
proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the
manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods.
India would have protected herself if she had been able, by
enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no
power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror.
A third cause of India's impoverishment is the enormous and wholly
unnecessary cost of her government. Writers in discussing the
financial situation in India have often pointed out the fact that
her government is the most expensive in the world. Of course the
reason why is plain: it is because it is a government carried on
not by the people of the soil, but by men from a distant country.
These foreigners, having all power in their own hands, including
power to create such offices as they choose and to attach to them
such salaries and pensions as they see fit, naturally do not err on
the side of making the offices too few or the salaries and pensions
too small. Nearly all the higher officials throughout India are
British. To be sure, the Civil Service is nominally open to
Indians. But it is hedged about with so many restrictions (among
others, Indian young men being required to make the journey of
seven thousand miles from India to London to take their
examinations) that they are able for the most part to secure only
the lowest and poorest places. The amount of money which the Indian
people are required to pay as salaries to this great army of
foreign civil servants and appointed higher officials, and then,
later, as pensions for the same, after they have served a given
number of years in India, is very large. That in three-fourths if
not nine-tenths of the positions quite as good service could be
obtained for the government at a fraction of the present cost, by
employing educated and competent Indians, who much better
understand the wants of the country, is quite true. But that would
not serve the purpose of England, who wants these lucrative offices
for her sons. Hence poor Indian ryots must sweat and go hungry, and
if need be starve, that an ever-growing army of foreign officials
may have large salaries and fat pensions. And of course much of the
money paid for these salaries, and practically all paid for the
pensions, goes permanently out of India.
Another burden upon the people of India which they ought not to be
compelled to bear, and which does much to increase their poverty,
is the enormously heavy military expenses of the government. I am
not complaining of the maintenance of such an army as may be
necessary for the defense of the country. But the Indian army is
kept at a strength much beyond what the defense of the country
requires. India is made a sort of general rendezvous and training
camp for the Empire, from which soldiers may at any time be drawn
for service in distant lands. If such an imperial training camp and
rendezvous is needed, a part at least of the heavy expense of it
ought to come out of the Imperial Treasury. But no, India is
helpless, she can be compelled to pay it, she is compelled to pay
it. Many English statesmen recognize this as wrong, and condemn it;
yet it goes right on. Said the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
"Justice demands that England should pay a portion of the cost of
the great Indian army maintained in India for Imperial rather than
Indian purposes. This has not yet been done, and famine-stricken
India is being bled for the maintenance of England's worldwide
empire." But there is still worse than this. Numerous wars and
campaigns are carried on outside of India, the expenses of which,
wholly or in part, India is compelled to bear. For such foreign
wars and campaigns -- campaigns and wars in which the Indian pcople
had no concern, and for which they received no benefit, the aim of
which was solely conquest and the extension of British power --
India was required to pay during the last century the enormous
total of more than $460,000,000. How many such burdens as these can
the millions of India, who live on the average income of $6 a year,
bear without being crushed?
Perhaps the greatest of all the causes of the impoverishment of the
Indian people is the steady and enormous drain of wealth from India
to England, which has been going on ever since the East India
Company first set foot in the land, three hundred years ago, and is
going on still with steadily increasing volume. England claims that
India pays her no "tribute." Technically, this is true; but,
really, it is very far from true. In the form of salaries spent in
England, pensions sent to England, interest drawn in England on
investments made in India, business profits made in India and sent
to England, and various kinds of exploitation carried on in India
for England's benefit, a vast stream of wealth ("tribute" in
effect) is constantly pouring into England from India. Says Mr. R.
C. Dutt, author of the Economic History of India(and there is no
higher authority), "A sum reckoned at twenty millions of English
money, or a hundred millions of American money [some other
authorities put it much higher], which it should be borne in mind
is equal to half the net revenues of India, is remitted annually
from this country [India] to England, without a direct equivalent.
Think of it! One-half of what we [in India] pay as taxes goes out
of the country, and does not come back to the people. No other
country on earth suffers like this at the present day; and no
country on earth could bear such an annual drain without increasing
impoverishment and repeated famines. We denounce ancient Rome for
impoverishing Gaul and Egypt, Sicily and Palestine, to enrich
herself. We denounce Spain for robbing the New World and the
Netherlands to amass wealth. England is following exactly the same
practice in India. Is it strange that she is converting India into
a land of poverty and famine?"
But it is only a part of the wrong done to India that she is
impoverished. Quite as great an injustice is her loss of liberty,
-- the fact that she is allowed no part in shaping her own
political destiny. As we have seen, Canada and Australia are free
and self-governing. India is kept in absolute subjection. Yet her
people are largely of Aryan blood, the finest race in Asia. There
are not wanting men among them, men in numbers, who are the equals
of their British masters, in knowledge, in ability, in
trustworthiness, in every high quality. It is not strange that many
Englishmen are waking up to the fact that such treatment of such a
people, of any people, is tyranny: it is a violation of those
ideals of freedom and justice which have been England's greatest
glory. It is also short-sighted as regards Britain's own interests.
It is the kind of policy which cost her her American Colonies, and
later came near costing her Canada. If persisted in, it may cost
her India.
What is the remedy for the evils and burdens under which the Indian
people are suffering? How may the people be relieved from their
abject and growing poverty? How can they be given prosperity,
happiness, and content?
Many answers are suggested. One is, make the taxes lighter. This is
doubtless important. But how can it be effected so long as the
people have no voice in their own government? Another is, enact
such legislation and set on foot such measures as may be found
necessary to restore as far as possible the native industries which
have been destroyed. This is good; but will an alien government,
and one which has itself destroyed these industries for its own
advantage, ever do this? Another is, reduce the unnecessary and
illegitimate military expenses. This is easy to say, and it is most
reasonable. But how can it be brought about, so long as the
government favors such expenses, and the people have no power?
Another thing urged is, stop the drain of wealth to England. But
what steps can be taken looking in this direction so long ns India
has no power to protect herself? It all comes back to this: the
fundamental difficulty, the fundamental evil, the fundamental
wrong, lies in the fact that the Indian people are permitted to
have no voice in their own government. Thus they are unable to
guard their own interests, unable to protect themselves against
unjust laws, unable to inaugurate those measures for their own
advancement which must always come from those immediately
concerned.
It is hard to conceive of a government farther removed from the
people in spirit or sympathy than is that of India. There has been
a marked change for the worse in this respect within the past
twenty-five years, since the vice-regal term of Lord Ripon. The
whole spirit of the government has become reactionary, increasingly
so, reaching its culmination in the recent administration of Lord
Curzon. The present Indian Secretary, Lord Morley, has promised
improvement; but, so far, the promise has had no realization.
Instead of improvement, the situation has been made in important
respects worse. There have been tyrannies within the past two
years, within the past three months, which even Lord Curzon would
have shrunk from. There is no space here to enumerate them.
Fifty years ago the people were consulted and conciliated in ways
that would not now be thought of. Then the government did not
hesitate to hold before the people the ideal of increasing
political privileges, responsibilities, and advantages. It was
freely given out that the purpose of the government was to prepare
the people for self-rule. Now no promise or intimation of anything
of the kind is ever heard from any one in authority. Everywhere in
India one finds Englishmen -- officials and others -- with few
exceptions -- regarding this kind of talk as little better than
treason. The Civil Service of India is reasonably efficient, and to
a gratifying degree free from peculation and corruption. But the
government is as complete a bureaucracy as that of Russia. Indeed
it is no exaggeration to say that, as a bureaucracy, it is as
autocratic, as arbitrary in its methods, as reactionary in its
spirit, as far removed from sympathy with the people, as determined
to keep all power in its own hands, as unwilling to consult the
popular wishes, or to listen to the voice of the most enlightened
portion of the nation, even when expressed through the great and
widely representative Indian National Congress, as is the Russian
bureaucracy. Proof of this can be furnished to any amount.
It is said that India is incapable of ruling herself. If so, what
an indictment is this against England! She was not incapable of
ruling herself before England came. Have one hundred and fifty
years of English tutelage produced in her such deterioration? As we
have seen, she was possessed of a high civilization and of
developed governments long before England or any part of Europe had
emerged from barbarism. For three thousand years before England's
arrival, Indian kingdoms and empires had held leading places in
Asia. Some of the ablest rulers, statesmen, and financiers of the
world have been of India's production. How is it, then, that she
loses her ability to govern herself as soon as England appears upon
the scene? To be sure, at that time she was in a peculiarly
disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered that
the Mogul Empire was just breaking up, and new political
adjustments were everywhere just being made, -- a fact which
accounts for England's being able to gain a political foothold in
India. But everything indicates that if India had not been
interfered with by European powers, she would soon have been under
competent governments of her own again.
A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself
-- and surely one that should be conclusive -- is the fact that, in
parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It
is notorious that the very best government in India to-day is not
that carried on by the British, but that of several of the native
states, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these states, particularly
Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented,
and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note
the superiority of both these states in the important matter of
popular education. Mysore is spending on education more than three
times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made
her education free and compulsory. Both of these states, but
especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line with the
leading nations of Europe and America by making provision for the
education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British
India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only
one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.
The truth is, not one single fact can be cited that goes to show
that India cannot govern herself, -- reasonably well at first,
excellently well later, -- if only given a chance. It would not be
difficult to form an Indian Parliament to-day, composed of men as
able and of as high character as those that constitute the fine
Parliament of Japan, or as those that will be certain to constitute
the not less able national Parliament of China when the new
constitutional government of that nation comes into operation. This
is only another way of saying that among the leaders in the various
states and provinces of India there is abundance of material to
form an Indian National Parliament not inferior in intellectual
ability or in moral worth to the parliaments of the Western world.
We have now before us the data for understanding, at least in a
measure, the meaning of the "New National Movement in India." It is
the awakening and the protest of a subject people. It is the effort
of a nation, once illustrious, and still conscious of its inherent
superiority, to rise from the dust, to stand once more on its feet,
to shake off fetters which have become unendurable. It is the
effort of the Indian people to get for themselves again a country
which shall be in some true sense their own, instead of remaining,
as for a century and a half it has been, a mere preserve of a
foreign power, -- in John Stuart Mill's words, England's "cattle
farm." The people of India want the freedom which is their right,
-- freedom to shape their own institutions, their own industries,
their own national life. This does not necessarily mean separation
from Great Britain; but it does mean, if retaining a connection
with the British Empire, becoming citizens,and not remaining
forever helpless subjectsin the hands of irresponsible masters. It
does mean a demand that India shall be given a place in the Empire
essentially like that of Canada or Australia,with such autonomy and
home rule as are enjoyed by these free, self-governing colonies. Is
not this demand just? Not only the people of India, but many of the
best Englishmen, answer unequivocally, Yes! In the arduous struggle
upon which India has entered to attain this end (arduous indeed her
struggle must be, for holders of autocratic and irresponsible power
seldom in this world surrender their power without being compelled)
surely she should have the sympathy of the enlightened and
liberty-loving men and women of all nations.
The Atlantic Monthly; October, 1908; The New Nationalist Movement
in India; Volume 102, No. 4; pages 526-535
