Worth Reading

[Hinduraksha]

This is a long article, about 6250 words.  From the point of the
colonial history of India, it is an important article for four reasons.

First, it was written in 1908, that is 40 years before Independence, and
a hundred years ago from now.

Second, it was published in an American magazine.  Thus one has to
assume that the information in it was available to a wide audience.
Particularly, it would be available to the intellectual class, and those
living in the USA (and perhaps Britain) who wish to know about India.
This magazine has been in existence since at least 1857, that is it is
150 years old.  (I do not know the political orientation of the
magazine, but looking at the few articles at its site, it is most likely
to be to the right of centre, if not to the right itself.)

Thirdly, it was written by a non-Indian, which should normally give
credence to the information provided.  What has been written here has
also been written by many Indians at the time.  However, these writings
could well be dismissed as being biased.

Fourthly, the information that is presented here is, I think, not
generally available and not together at one place.

A lot is often written about the benefits of colonisation.  In fact, our
present prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had mentioned about it when
he spoke at the Cambridge University, a year or so ago.  People like Dr
Amartya Sen, who teaches at Cambridge University, is circumspect about
what happened in India during the time of colonisation.  He has written
about the famines during the period, but nothing about the wealth that
was expropriated from India.

The article would give you an idea about the extreme disadvantage that
the colonial rule placed India in, by the time we got our independence.
(I am sure British and other colonialists behaved in the same abonimable
way in other places.  A comparative study of the various countries would
be quite useful.  However, I would like to restrict my brief comments
only to my country, that is India.)

Despite all this, our ancestors did not give up, and made serious (and I
think successful) efforts to ensure that our civilisation did not
whither away.  In the post-independent period, the people of India have
proved that they are quite capable of looking after themselves, given a
chance.  And this is the most important message that I would like to
leave you with, a message that will be reinforced when you read the
article.

If you think it appropriate, I would suggest to you that you pass this
article forward to as many people as you think would like to know about
the subject.  And, if you also think it approrpriate, please forward the
article along with my comments.

Namaste
Ashok Chowgule
Goa, India
Februrary 28, 2009

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The New Nationalist Movement in India
Author: Jabez T. Sutherland
Publication: The Atlantic
Date: October 1908
URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/190810/nationalist-india

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.

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