CHAPTER SEVEN
THE LAST PHASE (1)
Consolidation of British Rule and
Rise of Nationalist Movement
The Ideology of Empire. The New Caste
'OUR WRITING OF INDIA'S HISTORY IS PERHAPS RESENTED MORE THAN
anything else we have done' — so writes an Englishman well
acquainted with India and her history. It is difficult to say what
Indians have resented most in the record of British rule in India;
the list is long and varied. But it is true that British accounts of
India's history, more especially of what is called the British period,
are bitterly resented. History is almost always written by the
victors and conquerors and gives their viewpoint; or, at any rate,
the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field. Very
probably all the early records we have of the Aryans in India,
their epics and traditions, glorify the Aryans and are unfair to the
people of the country whom they subdued. No individual can
wholly rid himself of his racial outlook and cultural limitations,
and when there is conflict between races and countries even an
attempt at impartiality is considered a betrayal of one's own
people. War, which is an extreme example of this conflict, results
in a deliberate throwing overboard of all fairness and impartiality
so far as the enemy nation is concerned; the mind coarsens and
becomes closed to almost all avenues of approach except one.
The overpowering need ofthe moment is tojustify one's own actions
and condemn and blacken those ofthe enemy. Truth hides some-
where at the bottom of the deepest well and falsehood, naked
and unashamed, reigns almost supreme.
Even when actual war is not being waged there is often potential
war and conflicts between rival countries and interests. In a country
dominated by an alien power that conflict is inherent and con-
tinuous and affects and perverts people's thoughts and actions;
the war mentality is never wholly absent. In the old days when
war and its consequences, brutality and conquest and enslavement
of a people, were accepted as belonging to the natural order of
events, there was no particular need to cover them or justify them
from some other point ofview. With the growth of higher standards
the need for justification has arisen, and this leads to a perversion
of facts, sometimes deliberate, often unconscious. Thus hypocrisy
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pays its tribute to virtue, and a false and sickening piety allies itself
to evil deeds.
In any country, and especially in a huge country like India
with its complicated history and mixed culture, it is always possible
to find facts and trends to justify a particular thesis, and then this
becomes the accepted basis for a new argument. America, it is
said, is a land of contradictions, in spite of its standardization and
uniformity. How much more then must India be full of contradic-
tions and incongruities. We shall find there, as elsewhere, what we
seek, and on this preconceived basis we can build up a structure
of belief and opinion. And yet that structure will have untrue
foundations and will give a false picture of reality.
Recent Indian history, that is the history of the British period,
is so connected with present-day happenings that the passions
and prejudices of to-day powerfully influence our interpretation
of it. Englishmen and Indians are both likely to err, though their
errors will lie in opposite directions. Far the greater part of the
records and papers out of which history takes shape and is written
comes from British sources and inevitably represents the British
point of view. The very circumstances of defeat and disruption
prevented the Indian side of the story from being properly recorded,
and many of the records that existed suffered destruction during the
great Revolt of 1857. The papers that survived were hidden away in
family archives and could not be published for fear of con-
sequences. They remained dispersed, little known, and many
perished in the manuscript stage from the incursion of termites and
other insects which abound in the country. At a later stage when
some of these papers were discovered they threw a new light on
many historical incidents. Even British-written Indian history had
to be somewhat modified, and the Indian conception, often very
different from the British, took shape. Behind this conception lay
also a mass of tradition and memories, not of the remote past but
of a period when our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were
the living witnesses and often the victims of events. As history this
tradition may have little value, but it is important as it enables
us to understand the background of the Indian mind to-day.
The villain of the British in India is often a hero to Indians, and
those whom the British have delighted to honour and reward are
often traitors and quislings in the eyes of the great majority of the
Indian people. That taint clings to their descendants.
The history of the American Revolution has been differently
written by Englishmen and Americans, and even to-day when
old passions have subsided and there is friendship between the
two peoples each version is resented by the other party. In our
own day Lenin was a monster and a brigand to many English
statesmen of high repute, yet millions have considered him as a
saviour and the greatest man of the age. These comparisons will
290
give us some faint idea of the resentment felt by Indians at being
forced to study in their schools and colleges so-called histories which
disparage India's past in every way, vilify those whose memory
they cherish, and honour and glorify the achievements of British
rule in India.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale once wrote in his gently ironical way
of the inscrutable wisdom of Providence which had ordained
the British connection for India. Whether it was due to this
inscrutable wisdom or to some process of historic destiny or just
chance, the coming of the British to India brought two very
different races together; or, at any rate, it should have brought
them together, but as it happened they seldom approached each
other and their contacts were indirect. English literature and
English political thought influenced a tiny fringe of those who had
learned English. But this political thought, though dynamic in its
context, had no reality in India then. The British who came to
India were not political or social revolutionaries; they were con-
servatives representing the most reactionary social class in England,
and England was in some ways one of the most conservative coun-
tries in Europe.
The impact of western culture on India was the impact of a
dynamic society, of a 'modern' consciousness, on a static society
wedded to medieval habits of thought which, however sophisti-
cated and advanced in its own way, could not progress because of
its inherent limitations. And, yet, curiously enough the agents
of this historic process were not only wholly unconscious of their
mission in India but, as a class, actually represented no such
process. In England their class fought this historic process but
the forces opposed to them were too strong and could not be held
back. In India they had a free field and were successful in applying
the brakes to that very change and progress which, in the larger
context, they represented. They encouraged and consolidated
the position of the socially reactionary groups in India, and opposed
all those who worked for political and social change. If change
came it was in spite of them or as an incidental and unexpected
consequence of their activities. The introduction of the steam engine
and the railway was a big step towards a change of the mediaeval
structure, but it was intended to consolidate their rule and facilitate
the exploitation for their own benefit of the interior of the country.
This contradiction between the deliberate policy of the British
authorities in India and some of its unintended consequences
produces a certain confusion and masks that policy itself. Change
came to India because of this impact of the west, but it came
almost in spite of the British in India. They succeeded in slowing
down the pace of that change to such an extent that even to-day
the transition is very far from complete.
The feudal landlords and their kind who came from England
291
to rule over India had the landlord's view of the world. To
them India was a vast estate belonging to the East India Com-
pany, and the landlord was the best and the natural representa-
tive of his estate and his tenants. That view continued even
after the East India Company handed over its estate of India
to the British Crown, being paid very handsome compensation
at India's cost. (Thus began the public debt of India. It war.
India's purchase money, paid by India.) The British Govern-
ment of India then became the landlords (or landlords' agents).
For all practical purposes they considered themselves 'India',
just as the Duke of Devonshire might be considered 'Devonshire'
by his peers. The millions of people who lived and functioned
in India were just some kind of landlord's tenants who had to pay
their rents and cesses and to keep their place in the natural feudal
order. For them a challenge to that order was an offence against
the very moral basis of the universe and a denial of a divine dis-
pensation.
This somewhat metaphysical conception of British rule in
India has not changed fundamentally, though it is expressed
differently now. The old method of obvious rack-renting gave
place to more subtle and devious devices. It was admitted that
the landlord should be benevolent towards his tenantry and
should seek to advance their interests. It was even agreed that
some of the more loyal and faithful among the tenants should
be promoted to the estate office and share in a subordinate way
in the administration. But no challenge to the system of land-
lordism could be tolerated. The estate must continue to function
as it used to even when it changed hands. When pressure of
events made some such change inevitable, it was stipulated that
all the faithful employees in the estate office should continue, all
the old and new friends, followers and dependants of the landlord
should be provided for, the old age pensioners should continue
to draw their pensions, the old landlord himself should now func-
tion as a benevolent patron and adviser of the estate, and thus all
attempts to bring about essential changes should be frustrated.
This sense of identifying India with their own interests was
strongest in the higher administrative services, which were entirely
British. In later years these developed in that close and well-knit
corporation called the Indian Civil Service — 'the world's most
tenacious trade union,' as it has been called by an English writer.
They ran India, they were India, and anything that was harmful
to their interests must of necessity be injurious to India. From
the Indian Civil Service and the kind of history and record of
current events that was placed before them, this conception spread
in varying degrees to the different strata of the British people.
The ruling class naturally shared it in full measure, but even the
worker and the farmer were influenced by it to some slight extent,
292
and felt, in spite of their own subordinate position in their own
country, the pride of possession and empire. That same worker or
farmer if he came to India inevitably belonged to the ruling class
here. He was totally ignorant of India's history and culture and
he accepted the prevailing ideology of the British in India, for he
had no other standards to judge by or apply. At the most a vague
benevolence filled him, but that was strictly conditioned within
that framework. For a hundred years this ideology permeated all
sections of the British people, and became, as it were, a national
heritage, a fixed and almost unalterable notion, which governed
their outlook on India and imperceptibly affected even their
domestic outlook. In our own day that curious group which has
no fixed standards or principles or much knowledge of the out-
side world, the leaders of the British Labour Party, have usually
been the staunchest supporters of the existing order in India.
Sometimes a vague sense of uneasiness fills them at a seeming
contradiction between their domestic and colonial policy, bet-
ween their professions and practice, but, considering themselves
above all as practical men of commonsense, they sternly repress
all these stirrings of conscience. Practical men must necessarily
base themselves on established and known practice, on existing
conditions, and not take a leap into the dark unknown merely
because of some principle or untested theory.
Viceroys who come to India direct from England have to fit
in with and rely upon the Indian Civil Service structure. Be-
longing to the possessing and ruling class in England, they have
no difficulty whatever in accepting the prevailing I.C.S. outlook,
and their unique position of absolute authority, unparalleled
elsewhere, leads to subtle changes in their ways and methods of
expression. Authority corrupts and absolute authority corrupts
absolutely, and no man in the wide world to-day has had or has
such absolute authority over such large number of people as
the British Viceroy of India. The Viceroy speaks in a manner
such as no Prime Minister of England or President of the United
States can adopt. The only possible parallel would be that of Hitler.
And not the Viceroy only, but the British members of his Council,
the Governors, and even the smaller fry who function as secretaries
of departments or magistrates. They speak from a noble and
unattainable height, secure not only in the conviction that what
they say and do is right, but that it will have to be accepted as
right whatever lesser mortals may imagine, for theirs is the power
and the glory.
Some members of the Viceroy's Council are appointed direct
from England and do not belong to the Indian Civil Service.
There is usually a marked difference in their ways and utter-
ances from those of the Civil Service. They function easily
enough in that framework, but they cannot quite develop that
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superior and self-satisfied air of assured authority. Much less
can the Indian members of the Council (a fairly recent addi-
tion), who are obvious supers, whatever their numbers or intelli-
gence. Indians belonging to the Civil Service, whatever their
rank in the official hierarchy, do not belong to the charmed circle.
A few of them try to ape the manners of their colleagues without
much success; they become rather pompous and ridiculous.
The new generation of British members of the Indian Civil
Service are, I believe, somewhat different in mind and texture
from their predecessors. They do not easily fit into the old frame-
work, but all authority and policy flow from the senior members
and the newcomers make no difference. They have either to accept
the established order or, as has sometimes happened, resign and
return to their homeland.
I remember that when I was a boy the British-owned news-
papers in India were full of official news and utterances; of
service news, transfers and promotions; of the doings of English
society, of polo, races, dances, and amateur theatricals. There
was hardly a word about the people of India, about their political,
cultural, social, or economic life. Reading them one would hardly
suspect that they existed.
In Bombay there used to be quadrangular cricket matches
between four elevens made up respectively of Hindus, Moslems,
Parsees, and Europeans. The European eleven was called
Bombay Presidency; the others were just Hindus, Moslems,
Parsees. Bombay was thus essentially represented by the Euro-
peans; the others, one would imagine, were foreign elements
who were recognized for this purpose. These quadrangular
matches still take place, though there is much argument about
them, and a demand that elevens should not be chosen on religious
lines. I believe that the 'Bombay Presidency' team is now called
'European.'
English clubs in India usually have territorial names — the
Bengal Club, the Allahabad Club, etc. They arc confined to
Britishers, or rather to Europeans. There need be no objection
to territorial designation, or even to a group of persons having
a club for themselves and not approving of outsiders joining
it. But this designation is derived from the old British habit of
considering that they are the real India that counts, the real
Bengal, the real Allahabad. Others are just excrescences, useful
in their own way if they know their places, but otherwise a
nuisance. The exclusion of non-Europeans is far more a racial
affair than a justifiable means for people with cultural affinities
to meet together in their leisure moments for play and social
intercourse, without the intrusion of other elements. For my
part I have no objection to exclusive English or European clubs,
and very few Indians would care to join them; but when this
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social exclusiveness is clearly based on racialism and on a ruling
class always exhibiting its superiority and unapproachability, it
bears another aspect. In Bombay there is a well-known club which
did not allow and so far as I know, does not allow, an Indian
(except as a servant) even in its visitors' room, even though he
might be a ruling prince or a captain of industiy.
Racialism in India is not so much English versus Indian; it
is European as opposed to Asiatic. In India every European, be
he German, or Pole, or Rumanian, is automatically a member
of the ruling race. Railway carriages, station retiring-rooms,
benches in parks, etc., are marked 'For Europeans Only.' This
is bad enough in South Africa or elsewhere, but to have to put
up with it in one's own country is a humiliating and exasperat-
ing reminder of one's enslaved condition.
It is true that a gradual change has been taking place in these
external manifestations of racial superiority and imperial arro-
gance, but the process is slow and frequent instances occur to show
how superficial it is. Political pressure and the rise of a militant
nationalism enforce change and lead to a deliberate attempt to
tone down the former racialism and aggressiveness; and yet that
very political movement, when it reaches a stage of crisis and is
sought to be crushed, leads to a resurgence of all the old imperialist
and racial arrogance in its extremest form.
The English are a sensitive people, and yet when they go
to foreign countries there is a strange lack of awareness about
them. In India, where the relation of ruler and ruled makes
mutual understanding difficult, this lack of awareness is pecu-
liarly evident. Almost one would think that it is deliberate, so
that they may see only what they want to see and be blind to
all else; but facts do not vanish because they are ignored, and
when they compel attention there is a feeling of displeasure and
resentment at the unexpected happening, as of some trick having
been played.
In this land of caste the British, and more especially the Indian
Civil Service, have built up a caste which is rigid and exclusive.
Even the Indian members of the service do not really belong to
that caste, though they wear the insignia and conform to its rules.
That caste has developed something in the nature of a religious
faith in its own paramount importance, and round that faith has
grown an appropriate mythology which helps to maintain it. A
combination of faith and vested interests is a powerful one, and any
challenge to it arouses the deepest passions and fierce indignation.
The Plunder ofBengal helps the Industrial Revolution
in England
The East India Company had received permission from the
295
Mughal Emperor to start a factory at Surat early in the seven-
teenth century. Some years later they purchased a patch of land
in the south and founded Madras. In 1662 the island of Bombay
was presented to Charles II of England by way of dowry from
Portugal, and he transferred it to the company. In 1690 the
city of Calcutta was founded. Thus by the end of the seven-
teenth century the British had gained a number of footholds
in India and established some bridge-heads on the Indian coast-
line. They spread inland slowly. The battle of Plassey in 1757
for the first time brought a vast area under their control, and
within a few years Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and the east coast were
subject to them. The next big step forward was taken about forty
years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This
jrought them to the gates of Delhi. The third major advance
took place after the last defeat ofthe Marathas in 1818; the fourth
in 1849, after the Sikh wars, completed the picture.
Thus the British have been in the city of Madras a little over
300 years; they have ruled Bengal, Bihar, etc., for 187 years; they
extended their domination over the south 145 years ago; they
established themselves in the United Provinces (as they are now
called), central and western India about 125 years ago; and they
spread to the Punjab ninety-five years ago. (This is being written
in June, 1944.) Leaving out the city of Madras as too small an
area, there is a difference of nearly 100 years between their
occupation of Bengal and that ofthe Punjab. During this period
British policy and administrative methods changed repeatedly.
These changes were dictated by new developments in England
as well as the consolidation of British rule in India. The treat-
ment of each newly acquired area varied according to these
changes, and depended also on the character of the ruling group
which had been defeated by the British. Thus in Bengal, where
the victory had been very easy, the Moslem landed gentry were
looked upon as the ruling classes and a policy was pursued to
break their power. In the Punjab, on the other hand, power
was seized from the Sikhs and there was no initial antagonism
between the British and (he Moslems. In the greater part of
India the Marathas had been opponents ofthe British.
A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of India
which have been longest under British rule are the poorest to-day.
Indeed some kind of chart might be drawn up to indicate the
close connection between length of British rule and progressive
growth of poverty. A few large cities and some new industrial
areas do not make any essential difference to this survey. What
is noteworthy is the condition ofthe masses as a whole, and there
can be no doubt that the poorest parts of India are Bengal, Bihar,
Orissa, and parts of the Madras presidency; the mass level and
standards of living are highest in the Punjab. Bengal certainly was
296
a very rich and prosperous province before the British came.
There may be many reasons for these contrasts and differences.
But it is difficult to get over the fact that Bengal, once so rich and
flourishing, after 187 years of British rule, accompanied, as we are
told, by strenuous attempts on the part of the British to improve its
condition and to teach its people the art of self-government, is
to-day, a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving, and dying
people.
Bengal had the first full experience of British rule in India.
That rule began with outright plunder, and a land revenue sys-
tem which extracted the uttermost farthing not only from the
living but also from the dead cultivators. The English historians
of India, Edward Thompson and G. T. Garrett, tell us that 'a
gold-lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the
Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizarro's age filled the English mind.
Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until she has
been bled white.' 'For the monstrous financial immorality of the
English conduct in India for many a year after this, Glive was
largely responsible.'* Clive, the great empire-builder, whose
statue faces the India Office in London to-day. It was pure loot.
The 'Pagoda tree' was shaken again and again till the most terrible
famines ravaged Bengal. This process was called trade later on
but that made little difference. Government was this so-called
trade, and trade was plunder. There are few instances in history
of anything like it. And it must be remembered that this lasted,
under various names and under different forms, not for a few years
but for generations. The outright plunder gradually took the shape
of legalized exploitation which, though not so obvious, was in
reality worse. The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence, and
greed of money of these early generations of British rule in India
is something which passes comprehension. It is significant that one
of the Hindustani words which has become part of the English
language is 'loot.' Says Edward Thompson, and this does not
refer to Bengal only, 'one remembers the early history of British
India which is perhaps the world's high-water mark of graft.'
The result of all this, even in its early stages, was the famine
of 1770, which swept away over a third of the population of
Bengal and Bihar. But it was all in the cause of progress, and
Bengal can take pride in the fact that she helped greatly in giving
birth to the industrial revolution in England. The American
writer, Brooke Adams, tells us exactly how this happened: 'The
influx of Indian treasure, by adding considerably to the nation's
cash capital, not only increased its stock of energy, but added
much to its flexibility and the rapidity of its movement. Very
soon after Plassey, the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London,
* 'Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India' by Edward Thompson and G T. Garrett
(London, 1935).
297
and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities
agree that the "industrial revolution" began with the year 1770
Plassey was fought in 1757, and probably nothing has ever equalled
the rapidity ofthe change that followed. In 1760 the flying shuttle
appeared, and coal began to replace wood in smelting. In 1764
Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, in 1776 Grompton
contrived the mule, in 1785 Cartwright patented the power loom
and in 1768 Watt matured the steam engine But though
these machines served as outlets for the accelerating movements
of the time, they did not cause the acceleration. In themselves
inventions are passive., .waiting for a sufficient store of force
to have accumulated to set them working. That store must always
take the shape of money, and money not hoarded but in motion.
Before the influx of the Indian treasure, and the expansion of
credit which followed, no force sufficient for this purpose existed
Possibly since the world began, no investment has ever yielded the
profit reaped from the Indian plunder, because for nearly fifty years
Great Britain stood without a competitor.'*
The Destruction of India's Industry and the Decay
of her Agriculture
The chief business ofthe East India Company in its early period,
the very object for which it was started, was to carry Indian
manufactured goods, textiles, etc., as well as spices and the like
from the east to Europe, where there was a great demand for
these articles. With the developments in industrial techniques
in England a new class of industrial capitalists rose there, demand-
ing a change in this policy. The British market was to be closed
to Indian products and the Indian market opened to British manu-
factures. The British Parliament, influenced by this new class,
began to take a greater interest in India and the working of the
East India Company. To begin with, Indian goods were excluded
from Britain by legislation, and as the East India Company held a
monopoly in the Indian export business, this exclusion influenced
other foreign markets also. This was followed by vigorous attempts
to restrict and crush Indian manufactures by various measures and
internal duties which prevented the flow of Indian goods within
the country itself. British goods meanwhile had free entry. The
Indian textile industry collapsed, affecting vast numbers of weavers
and artisans. The process was rapid in Bengal and Bihar, elsewhere
it spread gradually with the expansion of British rule and the
building of railways. It continued throughout the nineteenth
century, breaking up other old industries also, ship-building,
metal working, glass, paper, and many crafts.
*Brooke Adams: 'The Law of Civilization and Decay' (1928), pp. 259-60, quoted by
Kate Mitchel: 'India' (1943).
298
To some extent this was inevitable as the older manufactur-
ing came into conflict with the new industrial technique. But
it was hastened by political and economic pressure and no
attempt was made to apply the new techniques to India. Indeed
every attempt was made to prevent this happening, and thus
the economic development of India was arrested and the growth
of the new industry prevented. Machinery could not be import-
ed into India. A vacuum was created which could only be filled
by British goods, and which led to rapidly increasing unemploy-
ment and poverty. The classic type of modern colonial economy
was built up, India becoming an agricultural colony of indus-
trial England, supplying raw materials and providing markets
for England's industrial goods.
The liquidation of the artisan class led to unemployment on
a prodigious scale. What were all these scores of millions, who
had so far been engaged in industry and manufacture, to do
now ? Where were they to go ? Their old profession was no longer
open to them, the way to a new one was barred. They could die of
course; that way of escape from an intolerable situation is always
open. They did die in tens of millions. The English Governor-
General of India, Lord Bentinck, reported in 1834 that 'the misery
hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of
the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India.'
But still vast numbers of them remained, and these increased
from year to year as British policy affected remoter areas of the
country and created more unemployment. All these hordes of
artisans and craftsmen had no job, no work, and all their ancient
skill was useless. They drifted to the land, for the land was still
there. But the land was fully occupied and could not possibly
absorb them profitably. So they became a burden on the land
and the burden grew, and with it grew the poverty ofthe country,
and the standard of living fell to incredibly low levels. This
compulsory back-to-the-land movement of artisans and craftsmen
led to an ever-growing disproportion between agriculture and
industry; agriculture became more and more the sole business of
the people because ofthe lack of occupations and wealth-producing
activities.
India became progressively ruralized. In every progressive
country there has been, during the past century, a shift of
population from agriculture to industry; from village to town;
in India this process was reversed, as a result of British policy.
The figures are instructive and significant. In the middle of the
nineteenth century about fifty-five per cent of the population
is said to have been dependent on agriculture; recently this propor-
tion was estimated to be seventy-four per cent. (This is a pre-war
figure.) Though there has been greater industrial employment
during the war, the number of those dependent on agriculture
299
actually went up in the census of 1941 owing to increase of popula-
tion. The growth of a few large cities (chiefly at the expense of the
small town) is apt to mislead the superficial observer and give him
a false idea of Indian conditions.
This then is the real, the fundamental, cause of ihe appalling
poverty of the Indian people, and it is of comparatively recent
origin. Other causes that contribute to it are themselves the result
of this poverty and chronic starvation and under-nourishment
— like disease and illiteracy. Excessive population is unfortunate,
and steps should be taken to curb it wherever necessary, but it
still compares favourably with the density of population of many
industrialized countries. It is only excessive for a predominantly
agricultural community, and under a proper economic system the
entire population can be made productive and should add to the
wealth of the country. As a matter of fact great density of popu-
lation exists only in special areas, like Bengal and the Gangetic
Valley, and vast areas are still sparsely populated. It is worth
remembering that Great Britain is more than twice as densely
populated as India.
The crisis in industry spread rapidly to the land and became
a permanent crisis in agriculture. Holdings became smaller and
smaller, and fragmentation proceeded to an absurd and fantastic
degree. The burden of agricultural debt grew and ownership
of the land often passed to moneylenders. The number of land-
less labourers increased by the million. India was under an indus-
trial-capitalist regime, but her economy was largely that of the
pre-capitalist period, minus many of the wealth-producing ele-
ments of that pre-capitalist economy. She became a passive agent
of modern industrial capitalism, suffering all its ills and with hardly
any of its advantages.
The transition from a pre-industrialist economy to an economy
of capitalist industrialism involves great hardship and heavy cost
in human suffering borne by masses of people. This was especially
so in the early days when no efforts were made to plan such a
transition or to lessen its evil results, and everything was left to
individual initiative. There was this hardship in England during the
period of transition but, taken as a whole, it was not great as the
change-over was rapid and the unemployment caused was soon
absorbed by the new industries. But that did not mean that the cost
in human suffering was not paid. It was indeed paid, and paid in
full by others, particularly by the people of India, by famine and
death and vast unemployment. It may be said that a great part of
the costs of transition to industrialism in western Europe were paid
for by India, China, and the other colonial countries, whose eco-
nomy was dominated by the European powers.
It is obvious that there has been all along abundant material in
India for industrial development — managerial and technical ability,
300
skilled workers, even some capital in spite of the continuous drain
from India. The historian, Montgomery Martin, giving evidence
before an Inquiry Committee of the British Parliament in 1840,
said: 'India is as much a manufacturing country as an agriculturist;
and he who would seek to reduce her to the position of an agri-
cultural country, seeks to lower her in the scale of civilization.'
That is exactly what the British, in India sought to do, continuously
and persistently, and the measure of their success is the present
condition of India, after they have held despotic sway there for a
century and a half. Ever since the demand for the development of
modern industry arose in India (and this, I imagine, is at least 100
years old) we have been told that India is pre-eminently an agri-
cultural country and it is in her interest to stick to agriculture.
Industrial development may upset the balance and prove harm-
ful to her main business — agriculture. The solicitude which British
industrialists and economists have shown for the Indian peasant
has been truly gratifying. In view of this, as well as of the tender
care lavished upon him- by the British Government in India, one
can only conclude that some all-powerful and malign fate, some
supernatural agency, has countered their intentions and measures
and made that peasant one of the poorest and most miserable beings
on earth.
It is difficult now for anyone to oppose industrial development in
India but, even now, when any extensive and far-reaching plan is
drawn up, we are warned by our British friends, who continue to
shower their advice upon us, that agriculture must not be neglected
and must have first place. As if any Indian with an iota of intelli-
gence can ignore or neglect agriculture or forget the peasant. The
Indian peasant is India more than anyone else, and it is on his
progress and betterment that India's progress will depend. But
our crisis in agriculture, grave as it is, is interlinked with the crisis
in industry, out of which it arose. The two cannot be disconnected
and dealt with separately, and it is essential for the disproportion
between the two to be remedied.
India's ability to develop modern industry can be seen by her
success in it whenever she has had the chance to build it up. Indeed,
such success has been achieved in spite of the strenuous oppo-
sition of the British Government in India and of vested interests
in Britain. Her first real chance came during the war of 1914-18
when the inflow of British goods was interrupted. She profited by it,
though only to a relatively small extent because of British policy.
Ever since then there has been continuous pressure on the Govern-
ment to facilitate the growth of Indian industry by removing the
various barriers and special interests that come in the way. While
apparently accepting this as its policy, the Government has ob-
structed all real growth, especially of basic industries. Even in the
Constitution Act of 1935 it was specifically laid down that Indian
301
legislatures could not interfere with the vested interests of British
industry in India. The pre-war years witnessed repeated and vigor-
ous attempts to build up basic and heavy industries, all scotched
by official policy. But the most amazing instances of official obstruc-
tion have been during the present war, when war needs for pro-
duction were paramount. Even those vital needs were not suffi-
cient to overcome British dislike of Indian industry. That industry
has grown because of the force of events, but its growth is trivial
compared to what it could have been or to the growth of industry
in many other countries.
The direct opposition of the earlier periods to the growth of
Indian industry gave place to indirect methods, which have been
equally effective, just as direct tribute gave place to manipulation
of customs and excise duties and financial and currency policies,
which benefited Britain at the expense of India.
Long subjection of a people and the denial of freedom bring
many evils, and perhaps the greatest of these lies in the spiritual
sphere — demoralization and sapping of the spirit of the people.
It is hard to measure this, though it may be obvious. It is easier
to trace and measure the economic decay of a nation, and as we
look back on British economic policy in India, it seems that the
present poverty of the Indian people is the ineluctable conse-
quence of it. There is no mystery about this poverty; we can see
the causes and follow the processes which have led to the present
condition.
India Becomes for the First Time a Political and
Economic Appendage of Another Country
The establishment of British rule in India was an entirely novel
phenomenon for her, not comparable with any other invasion
or political or economic change. 'India had been conquered before,
but by invaders who settled within her frontiers and made them-
selves part of her life.' (Like the Normans in England or the
Manchus in China.)' She had never lost her independence, never
been enslaved. That is to say, she had never been drawn into a
political and economic system whose centre of gravity lay outside
her soil, never been subjected to & ruling class which was, and
which remained, permanently alien in origin and character.'*
Every previous ruling class, whether it had originally come
from outside or was indigenous, had accepted the structural unity
of India's social and economic life and tried to fit into it. It had
become Indianised and had struck roots in the soil of the country.
The new rulers were entirely different, with their base elsewhere,
and between them and the average Indian there was a vast and
*K. S. Shelvankar: 'The Problem of India' (Penguin Special, London, 1940).
302
unbridgeable gulf — a difference in tradition, in outlook, in income,
and ways of living. The early Britishers in India, rather cut off
from England, adopted many Indian ways of living. But it was
a superficial approach and even this was deliberately abandoned
with the improvement in communications between India and
England. It was felt that the British ruling class must maintain its
prestige in India by keeping aloof, exclusive, apart from Indians,
living in a superior world of its own. There were two worlds: the
world of British officials and the world of India's millions, and there
was nothing in common between them except a common dislike
for each other. Previously races had merged into one another, or
at least fitted into an organically interdependent structure. Now
racialism became the acknowledged creed and this was intensified
by the fact that the dominant race had both political and economic
power, without check or hindrance.
The world market that the new capitalism was building up
would have, in any event, affected India's economic system. The
self-sufficient village community, with its traditional division of
labour, could not have continued in its old form. But the change
that took place was not a normal development and it disintegrated
the whole economic and structural basis of Indian society. A
system which had social sanctions and controls behind it and was
a part of the people's cultural heritage was suddenly and forcibly
changed and another system, administered from outside the group,
was imposed. India did not come into a world market but became
a colonial and agricultural appendage of the British structure.
The village community, which had so far been the basis of
Indian economy, was disintegrated, losing both its economic and
administrative functions. In 1830, Sir Charles Metcalfe, one of
the ablest of British officials in India, described these communi-
ties in words which have often been quoted: 'The village com-
munities are little republics having nearly everything they want
within themselves; and almost independent of foreign relations.
They seem to last where nothing else lasts. This union of the
village communities, each one forming a separate little state in
itself. ..is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to
the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence.'
The destruction of village industries was a powerful blow to
these communities. The balance between industry and agricul-
ture was upset, the traditional division of labour was broken
up, and numerous stray individuals could not be easily fitted
into any group activity. A, more direct blow came from the intro-
duction of the landlord system, changing the whole conception
of ownership of land. This conception had been one of commu-
nal ownership, not so much of the land as of the produce of the
land. Possibly not fully appreciating this, but more probably
taking the step deliberately for reasons of their own, the British
303
governors, themselves representing the English landlord class,
introduced something resembling the English system in India.
At first they appointed revenue-farmers for short terms, that is
persons who were made responsible for the collection of the
revenue or land tax and payment of it to the Government.
Later these revenue-farmers developed into landlords. The village
community was deprived of all control over the land and its
produce; what had always been considered as the chief interest
and concern of that community now became the private property
of the newly created landowner. This led to the breakdown of
the joint life and corporate character of the community, and the
co-operative system of services and functions began to disappear
gradually.
The introduction of this type of property in land was not only
a great economic change, but it went deeper and struck at the
whole Indian conception of a co-operative group social structure.
A new class, the owners of land, appeared; a class created by, and
therefore to a large extent identified with, the British Government.
The break-up of the old system created new problems and probably
the beginnings of the new Hindu-Moslem problem can be traced
to it. The landlord system was first introduced in Bengal and
Bihar where big landowners were created under the system known
as the Permanent Settlement. It was later realized that this was
not advantageous to the state as the land revenue had been fixed
and could not be enhanced. Fresh settlements in other parts of
India were therefore made for a period only and enhancements
in revenue took place from time to time. In some provinces a kind
of peasant proprietorship was established. The extreme rigour
applied to the collection of revenue resulted, especially in Bengal,
in the ruin of the old landed gentry, and new people from the
monied and business classes took their place. Thus Bengal became
a province predominantly of Hindu landlords, while their tenants,
though both Hindu and Moslem, were chiefly the latter.
Big landowners were created by the British after their own
English pattern, chiefly because it was far easier to deal with a
few individuals than with a vast peasantry. The objective was to
collect as much money in the shape of revenue, and as speedily,
as possible. If an owner failed at the stipulated time he was
immediately pushed out and another took his place It was also
considered necessary to create a class whose interests were iden-
tified with the British. The fear of revolt filled the minds of British
officials in India and they referred to this repeatedly In their
papers. Governor-General Lord William Bentinck said in 1829:
'If security was wanting against extensive popular tumult or
revolution, I should say that the Permanent Settlement, though
a failure in many other respects, has this great advantage at least,
of having created a vast body of rich landed proprietors deeply
304
interested in the continuance of British Dominion and having
complete command over the mass of the people.'
British rule thus consolidated itself by creating new classes and
vested interests which were tied up with that rule and privileges
which depended on its continuance. There were the landowners
and the princes, and there was a large number of subordinate
members of the services in various departments of government,
from the patwari, the village head-man, upwards. The two essential
branches of government were the revenue system and the police.
At the head of both of these in each district was the collector or
district magistrate who was the linchpin of the administration.
He functioned as an autocrat in his district, combining in himself
executive, judicial, revenue, and police functions. If there were
any small Indian states adjoining the area under his control,
he was also the British agent for them.
Then there was the Indian Army, consisting of British and
Indian troops but officered entirely by Englishmen. This was
reorganized repeatedly, especially after the mutiny of 1857, and
ultimately became organizationally linked up with the British
Army. This was so arranged as to balance its different elements
and keep the British troops in key positions. 'Next to the grand
counterpoise of a sufficient European force comes the counter-
poise of natives against natives,' says the official report on re-
organization in 1858. The primary function of these forces was
to serve as an army of occupation — 'Internal Security Troops'
they were called, and a majority of these was British. The Frontier
Province served as a training ground for the British Army at
India's expense. The Field Army (chiefly Indian) was meant for
service abroad and it took part in numerous British imperial
wars and expeditions, India always bearing the cost. Steps were
taken to segregate Indian troops from the rest of the population.
Thus India had to bear the cost of her own conquest, and then
of her transfer (or sale) from the East India Company to the
British Crown, for the extension of the British Empire to Burma
and elsewhere, for expeditions to Africa, Persia, etc., and for
her defence against Indians themselves. She was not only used as
a base for imperial purposes, without any reimbursement for this,
but she had further to pay for the training of part of the British
Army in England — 'capitation' charges these were called. Indeed
India was charged for all manner of other expenses incurred by
Britain, such as the maintenance of British diplomatic and con-
sular establishments in China and Persia, the entire cost of the
telegraph line from England'to India, part of the expenses of the
British Mediterranean fleet, and even the receptions given to
the Sultan of T ur key in London.
The building of railways in India, undoubtedly desirable and
necessary, was done in an enormously wasteful way. The Govern-
305
merit of India guaranteed 5 per cent interest on all capital invested
and there was no need to check or estimate what was necessary.
All purchases were made in England.
The civil establishment of government was also run on a lavish
and extravagant scale, all the highly paid positions being reserved
for Europeans. The process of Indianization of the administrative
machine was very slow and only became noticeable in the twentieth
century. This process, far from transferring any power to Indian
hands, proved yet another method of strengthening British rule.
The really key positions remained in British hands, and Indians
in the administration could only function as the agents of British
rule.
To all these methods must be added the deliberate policy,
pursued throughout the period of British rule, or creating divi-
sions among Indians, of encouraging one group at the cost of
another. This policy was openly admitted in the early days of
their rule, and indeed it was a natural one for an imperial power.
With the growth of the nationalist movement that policy took
subtler and more dangerous forms and, though denied, functioned
more intensively than ever.
Nearly all our major problems to-day have grown up during
British rule and as a direct result of British policy: the princes;
the minority problem; various vested interests, foreign and
Indian; the lack of industry and the neglect of agriculture; the
extreme backwardness in the social services; and, above all, the
tragic poverty of the people. The attitude to education has been
significant. In Kaye's 'Life of Metcalfe' it is stated that 'this
dread of the free diffusion of knowledge became a chronic disease
. . . continually afflicting the members of Government with all
sorts of hypochondriacal day-dreams and nightmares, in which
visions of the printing press and the Bible were making their flesh
creep, and their hair to stand erect with horror. It was our policy
in those days to keep the natives of India in the profoundest state
of barbarism and darkness, and every attempt to diffuse the
light of knowledge among the people, either of our own or of the
independent states, was vehemently opposed and resented.'*
Imperialism must function in this way or else it ceases to be
imperialism. The modern type of finance-imperialism added new
kinds of economic exploitation which were unknown in earlier
ages. The record of British rule in India during the nineteenth
century must necessarily depress and anger an Indian, and yet
it illustrates the superiority of the British in many fields, not
least in their capacity to profit by our disunity and weaknesses.
A people who are weak and who are left behind in the march
of time invite trouble and ultimately have only themselves to
* Quoted by Edward Thompson, 'The Life of Lord Metcalfe:
306
blame. If British imperialism with all its consequences was, in
the circumstances, to be expected in the natural order of events,
so also was the growth of opposition to it inevitable, and the final
crisis between the two.
The Growth of the Indian States System
One of our major problems in India to-day is that of the Princes
of the Indian states. These states are unique of their kind in the
world and they vary greatly in size and political and social con-
ditions. Their number is 601. About fifteen of these may be
considered major states, the biggest of these being Hyderabad,
Kashmir, Mysore, Travancore, Baroda, Gwalior, Indore, Cochin,
Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikanir, Bhopal, and Patiala. Then follow a
number of middling states and, lastly, several hundreds of very
small areas, some not bigger than a pin's point on the map.
Most of these tiny states are in Kathiawar, western India, and
the Punjab.
These states not only vary in size from that of France to almost
that of an average farmer's holding, but also differ in every other
way. Mysore is industrially the most advanced; Mysore, Travan-
core, and Cochin are educationally far ahead of British India.*
Most of the states are, however, very backward and some are
completely feudal. All of them are autocracies, though some have
started elected councils whose powers are strictly limited. Hydera-
bad, the premier state, still carries on with a typical feudal regime
supported by an almost complete denial of civil liberties. So also
most of the states in Rajputana and the Punjab. A lack of civil
liberties is a common feature of the states.
These states do not form compact blocks; they are spread out
all over India, islands surrounded by non-state areas. The vast
majority of them are totally unable to support even a semi-
independent economy; even the largest, situated as they are, can
hardly hope to do so without the full co-operation of the surround-
ing areas. If there was any economic conflict between a state
and non-state India, the former could be easily reduced to sub-
mission by tariff barriers and other economic sanctions. It is mani-
fest that both politically and economically these states, even the
largest of them, cannot be separated and treated as independent
entities. As such they would not survive and the rest of India
would also suffer greatly. They would become hostile enclaves all
* Travancore, Cochin, Mysore, and Baroda are, from the point of view of popular educa-
tion, far in advance of British India. In Travancore, it is interesting to note that popular
education began to be organized in 1801. (Compare England where it started in 1870.)
The literacy percentage in Travancore is now 58for men and 41 for women ; this is over four
limes higher than the British India percentage. Public health is also better organized in
Travancore. Women play an important part in public service and activities in Travancore.
307
over India, and if they relied on some external power for protec-
tion, this in itself would be a continuous and serious menace to
a free India. Indeed they would not have survived till to-day but
for the fact that politically and economically the whole of India,
including the states, is under one dominant power which protects
them. Apart from the possible conflicts between a state and non-
state India, it must be remembered that there is continuous pres-
sure on the autocratic ruler of the state from his own people, who
demand free institutions. Attempts to achieve this freedom are
suppressed and kept back with the aid of the British power.
Even in the nineteenth century, these states, as constituted,
became anachronisms. Under modern conditions it is impossible
to conceive of India being split up into scores of separate inde-
pendent entities. Not only would there be perpetual conflict but
all planned economic and cultural progress would become impos-
sible. We must remember that when these states took shape and
entered into treaties with the East India Company, at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, Europe was divided up into
numerous small principalities. Many wars and revolutions have
changed the face of Europe since then and are changing it to-day,
but the face of India was set and petrified by external pressure
imposed upon it and not allowed to change. It seems absurd to
hold up some treaty drawn up 140 years ago, usually on the field
of battle or immediately afterwards, between two rival commanders
or their chiefs, and to say that this temporary settlement must
last for ever. The people of the state of course had no say in that
settlement, and the other party at the time was a commercial
corporation concerned only with its own interests and profits.
This commercial corporation, the East India Company, acted
not as the agent of the British Crown or Parliament but, in theory,
as the agent ofthe Delhi Emperor, from whom power and authority
were supposed to flow, although he was himself quite powerless.
The British Crown or Parliament had nothing whatever to do with
these treaties. Parliament only considered Indian affairs when the
charter of the East India Company came up for discussion from
time to time. The fact that the East India Company was function-
ing in India under the authority conferred on it by the Diwani
grant ofthe Mughal Emperor made it independent of any direct
interference by the British Crown or Parliament. Indirectly Parlia-
ment could, if it so chose, cancel the charter or impose new condi-
tions at the time of renewal. The idea that the English King or
Parliament should even in theory function as agents and therefore
as subordinates ofthe shadowy Emperor at Delhi was not liked in
England and so they studiously kept aloof from the activities of
the East India Company. The money spent in the Indian wars was
Indian money raised and disposed of by the East India Company.
Subsequently, as the territory under the control of the East
308
India Company increased in area and its rule was consolidated,
the British Parliament began to take greater interest in Indian
affairs. In 1858, after the shock of the Indian mutiny and revolt,
the East India Company transferred its domain of India (for
money paid by India) to the British crown. That transfer did not
involve a separate transfer of the Indian states apart from the rest
of India. The whole of India was treated as a unit and the British
Parliament functioned in India through the Government of India
which exercised a suzerainty over the states. The states had no
separate relations with the British Crown or Parliament. They
were part and parcel of the system of government, direct and
indirect, represented by the Government of India. This govern-
ment, in later years, ignored those old treaties whenever it suited
its changing policy to do so, and exercised a very effective suzer-
ainty over the states.
Thus the British Crown was not in the picture at all so far as
the Indian states were concerned. It is only in recent years that
the claim to some kind of independence has been raised on behalf
of the states, and it has been further claimed that they have some
special relations with the British Crown, apart from the Govern-
ment of India. These treaties, it should be noted, are with very
few of the states; there are only forty treaty states, the rest have
'engagements and sanads.' These forty states have three-fourths
ofthe total Indian state population, and six of them have consider-
ably more than one-third of this population.*
In the Government of India Act of 1935, for the first time, some
distinction was made between the relations of the states and the
rest of India with the British Parliament. The states were removed
from the supervisory authority and direction of the Government
of India and placed directly under the Viceroy who, for this purpose,
was called the Crown representative. The Viceroy continued to be,
at the same time, the head of the Government of India. The poli-
tical department of the Government of India, which used to be
responsible for the states, was now placed directly under the
Viceroy and was no longer under his executive council.
How did these states come into existence? Some are quite new,
created by the British; others were the vice-royalties ofthe Mughal
Emperor, and their rulers were permitted to continue as feudatory
chiefs by the British; yet others, notably the Maratha chiefs, were
defeated by British armies and then made into feudatories. Nearly
all these can be traced back to the beginnings of British rule;
they have no earlier history. If some of them functioned indepen-
dently for a while, that independence was of brief duration and
ended in defeat in war or threat of war. Only a few ofthe states,
* These six are: Hyderabad, 12-13 million; Mysore, 7\ million; Travancore, 6'J million;
Baroda, 4 million; Kashmir, 3 million; Gwalior, 3 million; totalling over 36 million. The
total Indian states population is about 90 million.
309
and these are chiefly in Rajputana, date back to pre-Mughal times.
Travancore has an ancient, 1,000-year-old historical continuity.
Some ofthe proud Rajput clans trace back their genealogy to pre-
historic times. The Maharana of Udaipur, of the Suryavansh or
race ofthe sun, has a family tree comparable to that ofthe Mikado
ofJapan. But these Rajput chiefs became Mughal feudatories and
then submitted to the Marathas, and finally to the British. The
representatives ofthe East India Company, writes Edward Thomp-
son, 'now set the princes in their positions, lifting them out
of the chaos in which they were submerged. When thus picked
up and re-established, "the princes" were as completely helpless
and derelict as any powers since the beginning ofthe world. Had
the British Government not intervened, nothing but exstinction lay
before the Rajput states, and disintegration before the Maratha
states. As for such states as Oudh and the Nizam's dominions, their
very existence was bogus; they were kept in a semblance of life,
only by means of the breath blown through them by the protect-
ing power.'*
Hyderabad, the premier state to-day, was small, in area to
begin with. Its boundaries were extended twice, after Tipu Sultan's
defeat by the British and the Maratha wars. These additions were
at the instance of the British, and on the express stipulation that
the Nizam was to function in a subordinate capacity to them.
Indeed, on Tipu's defeat, the offer of part of his territory was first
made to the Peshwa, the Maratha leader, but he refused to accept
it on those conditions.
Kashmir, the next largest state, was sold by the East India
Company after the Sikh wars to the great-grandfather of the pre-
sent ruler. It was subsequently taken under direct British control
on a plea of misgovernment. Later the ruler's powers were restored
to them. The present state of Mysore was created by the British
after Tipu's wars. It was also under direct British rule for a lengthy
period.
The only truly independent kingdom in India is Nepal on the
north-eastern frontier, which occupies a position analogous to that
of Afghanistan, though it is rather isolated. All the rest came within
the scope of what was called the 'subsidiary system,' under which
all real power lay with the British Government, exercised through
a resident or agent. Often even the ministers of the ruler were
British officials imposed upon him. But the entire responsibility
for good government and reform lay with the ruler, who with the
*'The Making ofthe Indian Princes', Edward Thompson, pp. 270-1. In this book as well
as Thompson's 'Life of Lord Metcalfe,' there are vivid pictures of Hyderabad and British
control and graft there; also of Delhi and Ranjit Sing,\'s Punjab. The Butler Committee
(1928-29), appointed by the British Government to consider the problem ofthe Indian States,
said in its report: 'It is not in accordance with historical facts that when the Indian States
came into contact with the British power they were independent. Some were rescued, others
were created by the British. '
310
best will in the world (and he usually lacked that will as well as
competence) could do little in the circumstances. Henry Lawrence
wrote in 1846 about the Indian states system: 'If there was a device
for ensuring mal-government it is that of a native ruler and minister
both relying on foreign bayonets, and directed by a British Resi-
dent; even if all these were able, virtuous, and considerate, still
the wheels of government could hardly move smoothly. If it be
difficult to select one man, European or native, with all the requi-
sites of a just administrator, where are three who can or will work
together to be found? Each of the three may work incalculable
mischief, but no one of them can do good if thwarted by the other.'
Earlier still, in 1817, Sir Thomas Munro wrote to the Governor-
General: 'There are many weighty objections to the employment
of a subsidiary force. It has a natural tendency to render the govern-
ment of every country in which it exists weak and oppressive, to
extinguish all honourable spirit among the higher classes of society,
and to degrade and impoverish the whole people. The usual remedy
of a bad government in India is a quiet revolution in the palace,
or a violent one by rebellion or foreign conquests. But the presence
of a British force cuts off every chance of remedy, by supporting
the prince on the throne against every foreign and domestic enemy.
It renders him indolent, by teaching him to trust to strangers for
his security, and cruel and avaricious, by showing him that he has
nothing to fear from the hatred of his subjects. Wherever the subsi-
diary system is introduced, unless the reigning prince be a man of
great abilities, the country will soon bear the marks of it in decaying
villages and decreasing population Even if the prince himself
were disposed to adhere rigidly to the (British) alliance, there will
always be some amongst his principal officers who will urge him
to break it. As long as there remains in the country any high-
minded independence, which seeks to throw off the control of
strangers, such counsellors will be found. I have a better opinion
of the natives of India than to think that this spirit will ever be
completely extinguished; and I can therefore have no doubt that
the subsidiary system must everywhere run its full course and
destroy every government which it undertakes to protect.'*
In spite of such protests the subsidiary Indian state system was
built up, and it brought, inevitably, corruption .and tyranny in
its train. The governments of these states were often bad enough,
but, in any event, they were almost powerless; a few ofthe British
residents or agents in these states, like Metcalfe, were honest and
conscientious, but more often they were neither, and they exercised
the harlot's privilege of having power without responsibility.
Private English adventurers, secure in the knowledge of their race
and of official backing, played havoc with the funds ofthe state.
Some ofthe accounts of what took place in these states during the
^Quoted by Edward Thompson in 'The Making of the Indian Princes' (1943).
311
first half of the nineteenth century, especially in Oudh and
Hyderabad, are almost incredible. Oudh was annexed to British
India a little before the Mutiny of 1857.
British policy was then in favour of such annexations, and every
pretext was taken advantage of for a 'lapse' of the state to British
authority. But the Mutiny and great Revolt of 1857 demonstrated
the value of the subsidiary state system to the British Government.
Except for some minor defections the Indian princes not only
remained aloof from the rising, but, in some instances, actually
helped the British to crush it. This brought about a change in
British policy towards them, and it was decided to keep them and
even to strengthen them.
The doctrine of British 'paramountcy' was proclaimed, and in
practice the control of the political department of the Government
of India over the states has been strict and continuous. Rulers
have been removed or deprived of their powers; ministers have
been imposed upon them from the British services. Quite a large
number of such ministers are functioning now in the states, and
they consider themselves answerable far more to British authority
than to their nominal head, the prince.
Some of the princes are good, some are bad; even the good ones
are thwarted and checked at every turn. As a class they are of
necessity backward, feudal in outlook, and authoritarian in
methods, except in their dealings with the British Government,
when they show a becoming subservience. Shelvankar has rightly
called the Indian states 'Britain's fifth column in India.'
Contradictions of British Rule in India
Ram Mohan Roy. The Press
Sir William Jones. English Education in Bengal
One remarkable contradiction meets us at every turn in consider-
ing the record of British rule in India. The British became dominant
in India, and the foremost power in the world, because they were
the heralds of the new big-machine industrial civilization. They
represented a new historic force which was going to change the
world, and were thus, unknown to themselves, the forerunners and
representatives of change and revolution; and yet they deliberately
tried to prevent change, except in so far as this was necessary to
consolidate their position and help them in exploiting the country
and its people to their own advantage. Their outlook and objectives
were reactionary, partly because of the background of the social
clgss that came here, but chiefly because of a deliberate desire to
check changes in a progressive direction, as these might strengthen
the Indian people and thus ultimately weaken the British hold
on India. The fear of the people runs through all their thought and
policy, for' they did not want to and could not merge with them,
312
and were destined to remain an isolated foreign ruling group,
surrounded by an entirely different and hostile humanity. Changes,
and some in a progressive direction, did came, but they came in
spite of British policy, although their impetus was the impact of
the new west through the British.
Individual Englishmen, educationists, orientalists, journalists,
missionaries, and others played an important part in bringing
western culture to India, and in their attempts to do so often came
into conflict with their own Government. That Government
feared the effects of the spread of modern education and put many
obstacles in its way, and yet it was due to the pioneering efforts
of able and earnest Englishmen, who gathered enthusiastic groups
of Indian students around them, that English thought and litera-
ture and political tradition were introduced to India. (When I
say Englishmen I include, of course, people from the whole of Great
Britain and Ireland, though I know this is improper and incorrect.
But I dislike the word Britisher, and even that probably does not
include the Irish. My apologies to the Irish, the Scots, and the
Welsh. In India they have all functioned alike and have been
looked upon as one indistinguishable group.) Even the British
Government, in spite of its dislike of education, was compelled by
circumstances to arrange for the training and production of clerks
for its growing establishment. It could not afford to bring out from
England large numbers of people to serve in this subordinate capa-
city. So education grew slowly and, though it was a limited and
perverted education, it opened the doors and windows of the mind
to new ideas and dynamic thoughts.
The printing press and indeed all machinery were also consi-
dered dangerous and explosive for the Indian mind, not to be
encouraged in any way lest they led to the spread of sedition and
industrial growth. There is a story that the Nizam of Hyderabad
once expressed a desire to see European machinery and thereupon
the British Resident procured for him an airpump and a printing
press. The Nizam's momentary curiosity having been satisfied,
these were stored away with other gifts and curiosities. But when
the Government in Calcutta heard of this they expressed their
displeasure to their Resident and rebuked him especially for intro-
ducing a printing press in an Indian state. The Resident offered
to get it broken up secretly if the Government so desired.
But while private printing presses were not encouraged, Gov-
ernment could not carry on its work without printing, and official
presses were therefore started in Calcutta and Madras and elsewhere.
The first private printing press was started by the Baptist
missionaries in Serampore, and the first newspaper was started
by an Englishman in Calcutta in 1780.
All these and other like changes crept in gradually, influencing
the Indian mind and giving rise to the 'modern' consciousness.
313
Only a small group was directly influenced by the thought of
Europe, for India clung to her own philosophic background,
considering it superior to that of the west. The real impact and
influence of the west were on the practical side of life which was
obviously superior to the eastern. The new techniques — the railway
train, the printing press, other machinery, more efficient ways of
warfare — could not be ignored, and these came up against old
methods of thought almost unawares, by indirect approaches,
creating a conflict in the mind of India. The most obvious and
far-reaching change was the break-up of the agrarian system and
the introduction of conceptions of private property and land-
lordism. Money economy had crept in and 'land became a market-
able commodity. What had once been held rigid by custom was
dissolved by money.'
Bengal witnessed and experienced all these agrarian, technical,
educational, and intellectual changes long before any other consi-
derable part of India, for Bengal had a clear half-century ofBritish
rule before it spread over wider areas. During the second half of
the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, Bengal
therefore played a dominant role in British Indian life. Not only
was Bengal the centre and heart of the British administration, but
it also produced the first groups of English-educated Indians who
spread out to other parts of India under the shadow of the British
power. A number of very remarkable men rose in Bengal in the
nineteenth century, who gave the lead to the rest of India in cultural
and political matters, and out of whose efforts the new nationalist
movement ultimately took shape. Bengal not only had a much
longer acquaintance with British rule but it experienced it in its
earliest phases when it was both harsher and more exuberant,
more fluid and less set in rigid frames. It had accepted that rule,
adapted itselfto it, long before northern and central India submitted.
The great Revolt of 1857 had little effect on Bengal, although the
first spark appeared accidentally at Barrackpore near Calcutta.
Previous to British rule Bengal had been an outlying province
of the Mughal Empire, important but still rather cut off from
the centre. During the early mediasval period many debased forms
of worship and of Tantric philosophy and practices had flourished
among the Hindus there. Then came many Hindu reform move-
ments affecting social customs and laws and even changing some-
what the well-recognized rules of inheritance elsewhere. Chaitanya,
a great scholar who became a man of faith and emotion, establish-
ed a form of Vaishnavism, based on faith, and influenced greatly
the people of Bengal. The Bengalis developed a curious mixture of
high intellectual attainments and equally strong emotionalism.
This tradition of loving faith and service of humanity was repre-
sented in Bengal in the second half of the nineteenth century by
another remarkable man of saintly character, Ramakrishna
314
Paramahansa; in his name an order of service was established which
has an unequalled record in humanitarian relief and social work.
Full of the ideal of the patient loving service of the Franciscans of
old, and quiet unostentatious, efficient, rather like the Quakers,
the members of the Ramakrishna Mission carry on their hospitals
and educational establishments and engage in relief work, when-
ever any calamity occurs, all over India and even outside.
Ramakrishna represented the old Indian tradition. Before him,
in the eighteenth century, another towering personality had risen
in Bengal, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was a new type combining
in himself the old learning and the new. Deeply versed in Indian
thought and philosophy, a scholar in Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic,
he was a product of the mixed Hindu-Moslem culture that was
then dominant among the cultured classes of India. The coming
of the British to India and their superiority in many ways led his
curious and adventurous mind to find out what their cultural roots
were. He learnt English but this was not enough; he learnt Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew also to discover the sources of the religion and
culture of the west. He was also attracted by science and the techni-
cal aspects of western civilization, though at that time these
technical changes were not so obvious as they subsequently became.
Being of a philosophical and scholarly bent, Ram Mohan Roy
inevitably went to the older literatures. Describing him, Monier-
Williams, the Orientalist, has said that he was 'perhaps the first
earnest-minded investigator of the science of Comparative Reli-
gion that the world has produced'; and yet, at the same time, he
was anxious to modernize education and take it out of the grip of
the old scholasticism. Even in those early days he was in favour of
the scientific method, and he wrote to the Governor-General
emphasizing the need for education in 'mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences.'
He was more than a scholar and an investigator; he was a
reformer above all. Influenced in his early days by Islam and
later, to some extent, by Christianity, he stuck nevertheless to
the foundations of his own faith. But he tried to reform that faith
and rid it of abuses and the evil practices that had become asso-
ciated with it. It was largely because of his agitation for the
abolition of suttee that the British Government prohibited it. This
suttee, or the immolation of women on the funeral pyre of their
husbands, was never widespread. But rare instances continued to
occur among the upper classes. Probably the practice was brought
to India originally by the Scytho-Tartars, among whom the custom
prevailed of vassals and liegemen killing themselves on the death
of their lord. In early Sanskrit literature the suttee custom is de-
nounced. Akbar tried hard to stop it, and the Marathas also were
opposed to it.
Ram Mohan Roy was one of the founders of the Indian press.
315
From 1780 onwards a number of newspapers had been published
by Englishmen in India. These were usually very critical of the
Government and led to conflict and the establishment of a strict
censorship. Among the earliest champions of the freedom of the
press in India were Englishmen and one of them, James Silk Buck-
ingham, who is still remembered, was deported from the country.
The first Indian owned and edited newspaper was issued (in
English) in 1818, and in the same year the Baptist missionaries of
Serampore brought out a Bengali monthly and a weekly, the first
periodicals published in an Indian language. Newspapers and
periodicals in English and the Indian languages followed in quick
succession in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.
Meanwhile the struggle for a free press had already begun, to
continue with many ups and downs till to-day. The year 1818
also saw the birth of the famous Regulation III, which provided
for the first time for detention without trial. This regulation is still
in force to-day, and a number of people are kept in prison under
this 126-year-old decree.
Ram Mohan Roy was associated with several newspapers. He
brought out a bi-lingual, Bengali-English magazine, and later,
desiring an all-India circulation, he published a weekly in Persian,
which was recognized then as the language of the cultured classes
all over India. But this came to grief soon after the enactment
in 1823 of new measures for the control of the press. Ram Mohan
and others protested vigorously against these measures and even
addressed a petition to the King-in-Council in England.
Ram Mohan Roy's journalist activities were intimately con-
nected with his reform movements. His synthetic and universalist
points of view were resented by orthodox sections who also opposed
many of the reforms he advocated. But he also had staunch sup-
porters, among them the Tagore family which played an outstand-
ing part later in the renaissance in Bengal. Ram Mohan went to
England on behalf of the Delhi Emperor and died in Bristol in
the early thirties of the nineteenth century.
Ram Mohan Roy and others studied English privately. There
were no English schools or colleges outside Calcutta and the
Government's policy was definitely opposed to the teaching of
English to Indians. In 1781, the Calcutta Madrasa was started by
the Government in Calcutta for Arabic studies. In 1817, a group
of Indians and Europeans started the Hindu College in Calcutta,
now called the Presidency College. In 1791, a Sanskrit College
was started in Benares. Probably in the second decade of the
nineteenth century some missionary schools were teaching English.
During the twenties a school ofthought arose in government circles
in favour of the teaching of English, but this was opposed. How-
ever, as an experimental measure some English classes were
attached to the Arabic school in Delhi and to some institutions in
316
Calcutta. The final decision in favour of the teaching of English
was embodied in Macaulay's Minute on Education of February,
1835. In 1857, the Universities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay
began their career.
If the British Government in India was reluctant to teach English
to Indians, Brahmin scholars objected even more, but for different
reasons, to teach Sanskrit to Englishmen. When Sir William Jones,
already a linguist and a scholar, came to India as a judge of the
Supreme Court, he expressed his desire to learn Sanskrit. But no
Brahmin would agree to teach the sacred language to a foreigner
and an intruder, even though handsome rewards were offered.
Jones ultimately, with considerable difficulty, got hold of a non-
Brahmin Vaidya or medical practitioner who agreed to teach,
but on his own peculiar and stringent conditions. Jones agreed to
every stipulation, so great was his eagerness to learn the ancient
language of India. Sanskrit fascinated him and especially the
discovery of the old Indian drama. It was through his writings and
translations that Europe first had a glimpse of some of the treasures
of Sanskrit literature. In 1784 Sir William Jones established the
Bengal Asiatic Society which later became the Royal Asiatic Society.
To Jones, and to the many other European scholars, India owes
a deep debt of gratitude for the rediscovery of her past literature.
Much of it was known of course throughout every age, but the
knowledge had become more and more confined to select and
exclusive groups, and the dominance of Persian, as the language
of culture, had diverted people's minds frpm it. The search for
manuscripts brought out many a little-known work and the appli-
cation of modern critical methods of scholarship gave a new back-
ground to the vast literature that was revealed.
The advent and use of the printing press gave a great stimulus
to the development of the popular Indian languages. Some of
these languages — Hindi, Bengali, Gujrati, Marathi, Urdu, Tamil,
Telugu — had not only long been in use, but had also developed
literatures. Many of the books in them were widely known among
the masses. Almost always these books were epic in form, poems,
or collection of songs and verses, which could easily be memorized.
There was practically no prose literature in them at the time.
Serious writing was almost confined to Sanskrit and Persian, and
every cultured person was supposed to know one of them. These
two classical languages played a dominating role and prevented
the growth of the popular provincial languages. The printing of
books and newspapers broke the hold of the classics and imme-
diately prose literatures in the provincial languages began to
develop. The early Christian missionaries, especially of the Baptist
mission at Serampore, helped in this process greatly. The
first private printing presses were set up by them and their
efforts to translate the Bible into prose versions of the Indian
317
languages met with considerable success.
There was no difficulty in dealing with the well-known and
established languages, but the missionaries went further and
tackled some of the minor and undeveloped languages and gave
them shape and form, compiling grammars and dictionaries for
them. They even laboured at the dialects of the primitive hill and
forest tribes and reduced them to writing. The desire of the Christ-
ian missionaries to translate the Bible into every possible language
thus resulted in the development ofmany Indian languages. Christ-
ian mission work in India has not always been admirable or praise-
worthy, but in this respect, as well as in the collection of folklore,
it has undoubtedly been of great service to India.
The reluctance of the East India Company to spread education
was justified, for as early as 1830 a batch of students ofthe Hindu
College of Calcutta (where Sanskrit and English were taught)
demanded certain reforms. They asked for restrictions on the
political power ofthe company and provision for free and compul-
sory education. Free education was well-known in India from the
most ahcient times. That education was traditional, not very good
or profitable, but it was available to poor students without any
payment, except some personal service to the teacher. In this
respect both the Hindu and Moslem traditions were similar.
While the new education was deliberately prevented from
spreading, the old education had been largely liquidated in Bengal.
When the British seized power in Bengal there were a very large
number of muafis, that is tax-free grants of land. Many of these
were personal, but most were in the shape of endowments for
educational institutions. A vast number of elementary schools of
the old type subsisted on them, as well as some institutions for
higher education, which was chiefly imparted in Persian. The
East India Company was anxious to make money rapidly in order
to pay dividends to its shareholders in England, and the demands
of its directors were continuous and pressing. A deliberate policy
was therefore adopted to resume and confiscate these muafi lands.
Strict proof was demanded of the original grant, but the old
sanads and papers had long been lost or eaten up by termites;
so the muafis were resumed and the old holders were ejected, and
the schools and colleges lost their endowments. Huge areas were
involved in this way and many old families were ruined. The
educational establishments, which had been supported by these
muafis, ceased to function, and a vast number of teachers and others
connected with them were thrown out of employment.
This process helped in ruining the old feudal classes in Bengal,
both Moslem and Hindu, as well as those classes who were depen-
dent on them. Moslems were especially affected as they were, as
a group, more feudal than the Hindus and were also the chief
beneficiaries ofthe muafis. Among the Hindus there were far larger
318
numbers of middle class people engaged in trade and commerce
and the professions. These people were more adaptable and took
to English education more readily. They were also more useful to
the British for their subordinate services. Moslems avoided
English education and, in Bengal, they were not looked upon with
favour by the British rulers, who were afraid that the remnants
of the old ruling class might give trouble. Bengali Hindus thus
acquired almost a monopoly in the beginning in the subordinate
government service and were sent to the northern provinces. A few
Moslems, relics of the old families, were later taken into this service.
English education brought a widening of the Indian horizon,
an admiration for English literature and institutions, a revolt
against some customs and aspects of Indian life, and a growing
demand for political reform, The new professional classes took
the lead in political agitation, which consisted chiefly in sending
representations to Government. English-educated people in the
professions and the services formed in effect a new class, which
was to grow all over India, a class influenced by western thought
and ways and rather cut off from the mass of the population. In
1852 the British Indian Association was started in Calcutta. This
was one of the forerunners of the Indian National Congress, and yet
a whole generation was to pass before the Congress was started
in 1885. This gap represents the period of the Revolt of 1857-58,
its suppression and its consequences. The great difference between
the state of Bengal and that of northern and central India in the
middle of the century is brought out by the fact that while in
Bengal the new intelligentsia (chiefly Hindu) had been influenced
by English thought and literature and looked to England for
political constitutional reform, the other areas were seething with
the spirit of revolt.
In Bengal one can see more clearly than elsewhere the early
effects of British rule and western influence. The break-up of
I-- the agrarian economy was complete and the old feudal classes
had almost been eliminated. In their place had come new land-
owners whose organic and traditional contacts with the land
were far less, and who had few of the virtues and most of the
failings of the old feudal landlords. The peasantry suffered
famine and spoliation in many ways and were reduced to extreme
poverty. The artisan class was almost wiped-out. Over these
disjointed and broken-up foundations rose new groups and classes,
the products of British rule and connected with it in many ways.
There were the merchants who were really middlemen of British
trade and industry, profiting by the leavings of that industry.
There were also the English-educated classes in the subordinate
services and the learned professions, both looking to the British
power for advancement and both influenced in varying degrees by
western thought. Among these grew up a spirit of revolt against
319
the rigid conventions and social framework of Hindu society.
They looked to English liberalism and institutions for inspiration.
This was the effect on the upper fringe ofthe Hindus ofBengal.
The mass ofthe Hindus there were not directly affected and even
the Hindu leaders probably seldom thought of the masses. The
Moslems were not affected at all, some individuals apart, and
they kept deliberately aloof from the new education. They had
been previously backward economically and they became even
more so. The nineteenth century produced a galaxy of brilliant
Hindus in Bengal, and yet there is hardly a single Moslem Bengali
leader of any note who stands out there during this period. So
far as the masses were concerned there was hardly any appreciable
difference between the Hindus and Moslems; they were indisting-
uishable in habits, ways of living, language, and in their common
poverty and misery. Indeed, nowhere in India were the religious
and other differences between Hindus, and Moslems of all classes
so little marked as in Bengal. Probably 98 per cent ofthe Moslems
were converts from Hinduism, usually from the lowest strata of
society. In population figures there was probably a slight majority
of Moslems over Hindus. (To-day the proportions in Bengal are:
53 per cent Moslems, 46 per cent Hindus, 1 per cent others.)
All these early consequences of the British connection, and the
various economic, social, intellectual, and political movements
that they gave rise to in Bengal, are noticeable elsewhere in India,
but in lesser and varying degrees. The break-up ofthe old feudal
order and economy was less complete and more gradual elsewhere.
In fact that order rose in rebellion and even when crushed, survived
to some extent. The Moslems in upper India were culturally
and economically far superior to their co-religionists ofBengal, but
even they kept aloof from western education.
The Hindus took to this education more easily and were more
influenced by western ideas. The subordinate Government services
and the professions had far more Hindus than Moslems. Onl
in the Punjab this difference was less marked.
The Revolt of 1857-58 flared up and was crushed, but Bengal
was hardly touched by it. Throughout the nineteenth century
the new English-educated class, mainly Hindu, looked up with
admiration towards England and hoped to advance with her
help and in co-operation with her. There was a cultural renais-
sance and a remarkable growth of the Bengali language, and
the leaders of Bengal stood out as the leaders of political India.
Some glimpse of that faith in England which filled the mind of
Bengal in those days, as well as ofthe revolt against old-established
social codes, may be had from that moving message ofRabindranath
Tagore, which he gave on his eightieth birth-day (May, 1941),
a few months before his death. 'As I look back,' he says, 'on the
vast stretch of years that lie behind me and see in clear perspective
320
the history of my early development, I am struck by the change
that has taken place both in my own attitude and in the psychology
of my countrymen — a change that carries within it a cause of
profound tragedy.
'Our direct contact with the larger world of men was linked
up with the contemporary history of the English people whom
we came to know in those earlier days. It was mainly through
their mighty literature that we formed our ideas with regard to
these newcomers to our Indian shores. In those days the type of
learning that was served out to us was neither plentiful nor
diverse, nor was the spirit of scientific inquiry very much in
evidence. Thus their scope being strictly limited, the educated
of those days had recourse to English language and literature.
Their days and nights were eloquent with the stately declama-
tions of Burke, with Macaulay's long-rolling sentences; discus-
sions centred upon Shakespeare's drama and Byron's poetry and
above all upon the large-hearted liberalism of the nineteenth
century English politics.
'At the time though tentative attempts were being made to
gain our national independence, at heart we had not lost faith
in the generosity of the English race. This belief was so firmly
rooted in the sentiments of our leaders as to lead them to hope
that the victor would of his own grace pave the path to freedom
for the vanquished. This belief was based upon the fact that
England at the time provided a shelter to all those who had to
flee from persecution in their own country. Political martyrs
who had suffered for the honour of their people were accorded
unreserved welcome at the hands of the English. I was impressed
by this evidence of liberal humanity in the character of the
English and thus I was led to set them on the pedestal of my
highest respect. This generosity in their national character had
not yet been vitiated by imperialist pride. About this time, as a
boy in England, I had the opportunity of listening to the speeches
ofJohn Bright, both in and outside Parliament. The large-hearted
radical liberalism of those speeches, overflowing all narrow national
bounds, had made so deep an impression on my mind that some-
thing of it lingers even to-day, even in these days of graceless
disillusionment.
'Certainly that spirit of abject dependence upon the charity
of our rulers was no matter of pride. What was remarkable,
however, was the whole-hearted way in which we gave our re-
cognition to human greatness even when it revealed itself in
the foreigner. The best and noblest gifts of humanity cannot be
the monopoly of a particular race or country; its scope may
not be limited nor may it be regarded as the miser's hoard
buried underground. That is why English literature which
nourished our minds in the past, does even now convey its deep
321
resonance to the recesses of our heart.'
Tagore proceeds to refer to the Indian ideal of proper con-
duct prescribed by the tradition of the race. 'Narrow in them
selves these time-honoured social conventions originated an
held good in a circumscribed geographical area, in that strip o
land, Brahmavarta by name, bound on either side by the rivers
Saraswati and Drisadvati. That is how a pharisaic formalism
gradually got the upper hand of free thought and the idea "proper
conduct" which Manu found established in Brahmavarta steadily
degenerated into socialized tyranny.
'During my boyhood days the attitude of the cultured and
educated section of Bengal, nurtured on English learning, was
charged with a feeling of revolt against these rigid regulations
of society. . . .In place of these set codes of conduct we accepted
the ideal of "civilization" as represented by the English term.
'In our own family this change of spirit was welcomed for the
sake of its sheer rational and moral force and its influence was
felt in every sphere of our life. Born in that atmosphere, which
was moreover coloured by our intuitive bias for literature, I
naturally set the English on the throne of my heart. Thus passed
the first chapters of my life. Then came the parting of ways,
accompanied with a painful feeling of disillusion, when I began
increasingly to discover how easily those who accepted the
highest truths of civilization disowned them with impunity
whenever questions of national self-interest were involved.'
The Great Revolt of 1857. Racialism
After nearly a century of British rule, Bengal had accommo-
dated itself to it; the peasantry devastated by famine and crushed
by new economic burdens, the new intelligentsia looking to the
west and hoping that progress would come through English
liberalism. So also, more or less in the south and in western
India, in Madras and Bombay. But in the upper provinces there
was no such submission or accommodation and the spirit of
revolt was growing, especially among the feudal chiefs and their
followers. Even in the masses discontent and an intense anti-
British feeling were widespread. The upper classes keenly resented
the insulting and overbearing manners ofthe foreigners, the people
generally suffered from the rapacity and ignorance ofthe officials
of the East India Company, who ignored their time-honoured
customs and paid no heed to what the people of the country
thought. Absolute power over vast numbers of people had turned
their heads and they suffered no check or hindrance. Even the
new judicial system they introduced became a thing of terror
because ofits complications and the ignorance of thejudges of both
the language and customs of the country.
322
As early as 1817, Sir Thomas Munro, writing to the Gover-
j nor-General, Lord Hastings, after pointing out the advantages
of British rule, said: 'but these advantages are dearly bought.
I They are purchased by the sacrifice of independence, of national
character, and of whatever renders a people respectable The
1 consequence, therefore, of the conquest of India by the British
arms would be, in place of raising, to debase a whole people.
I There is perhaps no example of any conquest in which the natives
have been so completely excluded from all share of the government
| of their country as in British India.'
Munro was pleading for the employment of Indians in the
administration. A year later he wrote again: 'Foreign con-
querors have treated the natives with violence, and often with
great cruelty, but none has treated them with so much scorn
I as we; none has stigmatized the whole people as unworthy of
trust, as incapable of honesty, and as fit to be employed only
j where we cannot do without them. It seems to be not only
ungenerous, but impolitic, to debase the character of a people
I fallen under our dominion.'*
British dominion was extended to the Punjab by 1850 after
two Sikh wars. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who had held and
I extended the Sikh state in the Punjab, had died in 1839. In 1856
Oudh was annexed. Oudh had been virtually under British rule
1 for half a century, for it was a vassal state, its nominal ruler being
both helpless and degenerate, and the British Resident all-powerful.
It had sunk to the very depths of misery and illustrated all the
I evils of the subsidiary state system.
In May, 1857, the Indian army at Meerut mutinied. The
I revolt had been secretly and well organized but a premature
[outburst rather upset the plans of the leaders. It was much
more than a military mutiny and it spread rapidly and assumed
the character of a popular rebellion and a war of Indian indepen-
dence. As such a popular rebellion of the masses it was confined
I to Delhi, the United Provinces (as they are now called), and parts
I of central India and Bihar. Essentially it was a feudal outburst,
[headed by feudal chiefs and their followers and aided by the
[widespread anti-foreign sentiment. Inevitably it looked up to
[the relic of the Mughal dynasty, still sitting in the Delhi palace,
I but feeble and old and powerless. Both Hindus and Moslems took
1 full part in the Revolt.
This Revolt strained British rule to the utmost and it was ult-
imately suppressed with Indian help. It brought out all the
linherent weaknesses of the old regime, which was making its
[last despairing effort to drive out foreign rule. The feudal chiefs
Ihad the sympathy of the masses over large areas, but they were
|incapable, unorganized and with no constructive ideal or com-
*Quoted by Edward Thompson in 'The Making of the Indian Princes' (1943).
323
munity of interest. They had already played their role in history
and there was no place for them in the future. Many of their
number, in spite of their sympathies, thought discretion the
better part of valour, and stood apart waiting to see on which
side victory lay. Many played the part of quislings. The Indian
princes as a whole kept aloof or helped the British, fearing to
risk what they had acquired or managed to retain. There was
hardly any national and unifying sentiment among the leaders
and a mere anti-foreign feeling, coupled with a desire to maintain
their feudal privileges, was a poor substitute for this.
The British got the support of the Gurkhas and, what is much
more surprising, of the Sikhs also, for the Sikhs had been their
enemies and had been defeated by them only a few years before.
It is certainly to the credit of the British that they could win over
the Sikhs in this way; whether it is to the credit or discredit of j
the Sikhs of those days depends upon one's point of view. It is clear,
however, that there was a lack of nationalist feeling which might
have bound the people of India together. Nationalism of the
modern type was yet to come; India had still to go through much
sorrow and travail before she learnt the lesson which would give
her real freedom. Not by fighting for a lost cause, the feudal order,
would freedom come.
The Revolt threw up some fine guerrilla leaders. Feroz Shah,
a relative of Bahadur Shah, of Delhi, was one of them, but, most I
brilliant of all was Tantia Topi who harassed the British for |
many months even when defeat stared him in the face. Ulti-
mately when he crossed the Narbada river into the Maratha I
regions, hoping to receive aid and welcome from his own people,
there was no welcome, and he was betrayed. One name stands
out above others and is revered still in popular memory, the!
name of Lakshmi Bai, Rani ofjhansi, a girl of twenty years ofl
age, who died fighting. 'Best and bravest' of the rebel leaders, |
she was called by the English general who opposed her.
British memorials of the Mutiny have been put up in Cawn-|
pore and elsewhere. There is no memorial for the Indians whoj
died. The rebel Indians sometimes indulged in cruel and bar-J
barous behaviour; they were unorganized, suppressed, and oftenj
angered by reports of British excesses. But there is another side]
to the picture also that impressed itself on the mind of India,!
and in my own province especially the memory of it persists in]
town and village. One would like to forget all this, for it is
ghastly and horrible picture showing man at his worst,, evenl
according to the new standards of barbarity set up by nazisml
and modern war. But it can only be forgotten, or remembered!
in a detached impersonal way, when it becomes truly the past!
with nothing to connect it with the present. So long as the!
connecting links and reminders are present, and the spirit behind!
324
those events survives and shows itself, that memory also will
endure and influence our people. Attempts to suppress that
picture do not destroy it but drive it deeper in the mind. Only
by dealing with it normally can its effect be lessened.
A great deal of false and perverted history has been written
about the Revolt and its suppression. What the Indians think
about it seldom finds its way to the printed page. Savarkar
wrote 'The History of the War of Indian Independence' some
thirty years ago, but his book was promptly banned and is
banned still. Some frank and honourable English historians have
occasionally lifted the veil and allowed us a glimpse of the race
mania and lynching mentality which prevailed on an enormous
scale. The accounts given in Kaye and Malleson's 'History of
the Mutiny' and in Thompson and Garrett's 'Rise and Fulfilment
of British Rule in India' make one sick with horror. 'Every Indian
who was not actually fighting for the British became a "murderer
of women and children"... a general massacre of the inhabitants
of Delhi, a large number of whom were known to wish us success,
was openly proclaimed.' The days of Timur and Nadir Shah
were remembered, but their exploits were eclipsed by the new
terror, both in extent and the length of time it lasted. Looting
was officially allowed for a week, but it actually lasted for a month,
and it was accompanied by wholesale massacre.
In my own city and district of Allahabad and in the neigh-
bourhood, General Neill held his 'Bloody Assizes.' 'Soldiers and
civilians alike were holding Bloody Assize, or slaying natives
without any assize at all, regardless of age or sex. It is on the
records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the
Governor-General in Council, that "the aged, women, and
children are sacrificed as well as those guilty of rebellion." They
were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in villages —
perhaps now and then accidentally shot.' 'Volunteer hanging
parties went into the districts and amateur executioners were not
wanting to the occasion. One gentleman boasted of the numbers
he had finished off quite "in an artistic manner," with mango
trees as gibbets and elephants for drops, the victims of this wild
justice being strung up, as though for pastime, in the form of figures
of eight.' And so in Cawnpore and Lucknow and all over the place.
It is hateful to have to refer to this past history, but the spirit
behind those events did not end with them. It survived, and
whenever a crisis comes or nerves give way, it is in evidence again.
The world knows about Amritsar and Jallianwala Bagh, but it
does not know of much that has happened since the days of the
Mutiny, much that has taken place even in recent years and in
our time, which has embittered the present generation. Imperia-
lism and the domination of one people over another is bad, and
so is racialism. But imperialism plus racialism can only lead to
325
horror and ultimately to the degradation of all concerned with
them. The future historians of England will have to consider how
far England's decline from her proud eminence was due to her
imperialism and racialism, which corrupted her public life and
made her forget the lessons of her own history and literature.
Since Hitler emerged from obscurity and became the Fuehrer
of Germany, we have heard a great deal about racialism and
the nazi theory of the herrenvolk. That doctrine has been con-
demned and is to-day condemned by the leaders of the United
Nations. Biologists tell us that racialism is a myth and there
is no such thing as a master race. But we in India have known
racialism in all its forms ever since the commencement of British
rule. The whole ideology of this rule was that of the herrenvolk
and the master race, and the structure of government was based
upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism.
There was no subterfuge about it; it was proclaimed in unambiguous
language by those in authority. More powerful than words was
the practice that accompanied them and, generation after genera-
tion and year after year, India as a nation and Indians as indivi-
duals were subjected to insult, humiliation, and contemptuous
treatment. The English were an imperial race, we were told,
with the god-given right to govern us and keep us in subjection;
if we protested we were reminded of the 'tiger qualities of an
imperial race.' As an Indian, I am ashamed to write all this, for
the memory of it hurts, and what hurts still more is the fact that
we submitted for so long to this degradation. I would have preferred
any kind of resistance to this, whatever the consequences, rather
than that our people should endure this treatment. And yet it
is better that both Indians and Englishmen should know it, for
that is the psychological background of England's connection
with India, and psychology counts and racial memories are long.
One rather typical quotation will make us realize how most
of A the English in India have felt and acted. At the time of the
Ilbert Bill agitation in 1883, Seton Kerr, who had been Foreign
Secretary to the Government of India, declared that this Bill
outraged 'the cherished conviction which was shared by every
Englishman in India, from the highest to the lowest, by the
planter's assistant in his lowly bungalow and by the editor in
the full light of the Presidency town — from those to the Chief
Commissioner in charge of an important province and to the
Viceroy on his throne — the conviction in every man that he
belongs to a race whom God has destined to govern and subdue.'*
* Quoted in 'Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India', Edward Thompson and G. T.
Garrett (London, 1935).
326
The Techniques of British Rule: Balance and
Counterpoise
The Revolt of 1857-58 was essentially a feudal rising, though
there were some nationalistic elements in it. Yet, at the same
time, it was due to the abstention or active help of the princes
and other feudal chiefs that the British succeeded in crushing
it. Those who had joined the Revolt were as a rule the dis-
inherited and those deprived of their power and privileges by
the British authority, or those who feared that some such fate
was in store for them. British policy after some hesitation had
decided in favour of a gradual elimination of the princes and
the establishment of direct British rule. The Revolt brought
about a change in this policy in favour not only of the princes
but of the taluqdars or big landlords. It was felt that it was
easier to control the masses through these feudal or semi-feudal
chiefs. These taluqdars of Oudh had been the tax-farmers of the
Mughals but, owing to the weakness of the central authority,
they had begun to function as feudal landlords. Nearly all of
them joined the Revolt, though some took care to keep a way
of escape open. In spite of their rebellion the British authority
offered to reinstate them (with a few exceptions) and confirm
them in their estates on conditions of 'loyalty and good service.'
Thus these taluqdars, who take pride in calling themselves the
'Barons of Oudh,' became one of the pillars of British rule.
Though the Revolt had directly affected only certain parts
of the country, it had shaken up the whole of India and, parti-
cularly, the British administration. The Government set about
reorganizing their entire system; the British Crown, that is the
Parliament, took over the country from the East India Company;
the Indian army, which had begun the Revolt by its mutiny,
was organized afresh. The techniques of British rule, which
had already been well-established, were now clarified and con-
firmed and deliberately acted upon. Essentially these were: the
creation and protection of vested interests bound up with British
rule; a policy of balancing and counterpoise of different elements,
and the encouragement of fissiparous tendencies and division
amongst them.
The princes and the big landlords were the basic vested interests
thus created and encouraged; but now a new class, even more tied
up with British rule, grew in importance. This consisted of the
Indian members of the services, usually in subordinate positions.
Previously the employment of Indians had been avoided except
when this could not be helped, and Munro had pleaded for such
employment. Experience had now demonstrated that Indians
employed were so dependent on the British administration and
rule that they could be relied upon and treated as agents of that
327
rule. In the pre-mutiny days most of the Indian members of the
subordinate services had been Bengalis. These had spread out
over the upper provinces wherever the British administration
needed clerks and the like in its civil or military establishments.
Regular colonies of Bengalis had thus grown up at the administra-
tive or military centres in the United Provinces, Delhi, and even
in the Punjab. These Bengalis accompanied the British armies
and proved faithful employees to them. They became associated
in the minds of the rebels with Lhe British power and were greatly
disliked by them and given uncomplimentary titles.
Thus began the process of the Indianization of the adminis-
trative machine in its subordinate ranks, all real power and
initiative being, however, concentrated in the hands of the
English personnel. As English education spread, the Bengalis
had no longer a virtual monopoly of service and other Indians
came in, both on thejudicial and executive sides of the administra-
tion. This Indianization became the most effective method of
strengthening British rule. It created a civil army and garrison
everywhere, which was more important even than the military army
of occupation. There were some members of this civil army who
were able and patriotic and nationalistically inclined, but like the
soldier, who also may be patriotic in his individual capacity, they
were bound up by the army code and discipline, and the price of
disobedience, desertion, and revolt was heavy. Not only was this
civil army created but the hope and prospect of employment in it
affected and demoralized a vast and growing number of others.
There was a measure of prestige and security in it and a pension
at the end of the term of service, and if a sufficient subservience
was shown to one's superior officers, other failings did not count.
These civil ertiployees were the intermediaries between the British
authorities and the people, and if they had to be obsequious to their
superiors they could be arrogant to and exact obedience from
their own inferiors and the people at large.
The lack of other avenues of employment, other ways of making
a living, added, additional importance to government service. A
few could become lawyers or doctors, but even so, success was by
no means assured. Industry hardly existed. Trade was largely
in the hands of certain hereditary classes who had a peculiar
aptitude for it and who helped each other. The new education
did not fit anyone for trade or industry; its chief aim was government
service. Education was so limited as to offer few openings for a
professional career; oth A r social services were almost non-existent.
So government service remained and, as the colleges poured out
their graduates; even the growing government services could not
absorb them all, and a fierce competition arose. The unemployed
graduates and others formed a pool from which government could
always draw; they were a potential threat to the security of even
328
the employed. Thus the British Government in India became,
not only the biggest employer, but, for all practical purposes,
the sole big employer (including railways), and a vast bureaucratic
machine was built up, strictly managed and controlled at the top.
This enormous patronage was exercised to strengthen the British
hold on the country, to crush discordant and disagreeable ele-
ments, and to promote rivalry and discord amongst various
groups anxiously looking forward to employment in govern-
ment service. It led to demoralization and conflict, and the
government could play one group against the other.
The policy of balance and counterpoise was deliberately
furthered in the Indian army. Various groups were so arranged
as to prevent any sentiment of national unity growing up amongst
them, and tribal and communal loyalties and slogans were
encouraged. Every effort was made to isolate the army from the
people and even ordinary newspapers were not allowed to reach
the Indian troops. All the key positions were kept in the hands
of Englishmen and no Indian could hold the King's commission.
A raw English subaltern was senior to the oldest and most experien-
ced Indian non-commissioned officer or those holding the so-called
Viceroy's commissions. No Indian could be employed at army
headquarters except as a petty clerk in the accounts department.
For additional protection the more effective weapons of warfare
were not given to the Indian forces; they were reserved for the
British troops in India. These British troops were always kept with
the Indian regiments in all the vital centres of India to serve as
'Internal Security Troops' for suppression of disorder and to
overawe the people. While this internal army, with a predomi-
nance of British personnel, served as an army of occupation for
the country, the greater portion of the Indian troops were part of
the field army organized for service abroad. The Indian troops
were recruited from special classes only, chiefly in northern India,
which were called martial classes.
Again we notice in India that inherent contradiction in British
rule. Having brought about the political unification of the country
and thus let loose new dynamic forces which thought not only in
terms of that unity, but aimed at the freedom of India, the British
Government tried to disrupt that very unity it had helped to create.
That disruption was not thought of in political terms then as a
splitting up of India; it was aimed at the weakening of nationalist
elements so that Briiish rule might continue over the whole country.
But it was nonetheless an attempt at disruption, by giving greater
importance to the Indian states than they had ever had before, by
encouraging reactionary elements and looking to them for sup-
port, by promoting divisions and encouraging one group against
another, by encouraging fissiparous tendencies due to religion
or province, and by organizing quisling classes which were afraid
329
of a change which might engulf them. All this was a natural
understandable policy for a foreign imperialist power to pursue,
and it is a little naive to be surprised at it, harmful from the Indian
nationalist point of view though it was. But the fact that it was so
must be remembered if we are to understand subsequent develop-
ments. Out of this policy arose those 'important elements in
India's national life' of which we are reminded so often to-day;
which were created and encouraged to disagree and disrupt, and
are now called upon to agree among themselves.
Because of this natural alliance of the British power with the
reactionaries in India, it became the guardian and upholder
of many an evil custom and practice which it otherwise con-
demned. India was custom-ridden when the British came, and
the tyranny of old custom is often a terrible thing. Yet customs
change and are forced to adapt themselves to some extent to
a changing environment. Hindu law was largely custom, and
as custom changed the law also was applied in a different way.
Indeed, there was no provision of Hindu law which could not
be changed by custom. The British replaced this elastic custo-
mary law by judicial decisions based on the old texts, and these
decisions became precedents which had to be rigidly followed.
That was, in theory, an advantage, as it produced greater unifor-
mity and certainty. But, in the manner it was done, it resulted in
the perpetuation of the ancient law unmodified by subsequent
customs. Thus the old law which, in some particulars and in
various places, had been changed by custom and was thus out of
date, was petrified, and every tendency to change it in the well-
known customary way was suppressed. It was still open to a group
to prove a custom overriding the law, but this was extraordinarily
difficult in the law courts. Change could only come by positive
legislation, but the British Government, which was the legislating
authority, had no wish to antagonize the conservative elements on
whose support it counted. When later some legislative powers
were given to partially elected assemblies, every attempt to pro-
mote social reform legislation was frowned upon by the authorities
and sternly discouraged.
Growth of Industry: Provincial Differences
Slowly India recovered from the after-effects of the revolt of
1857-58. Despite British policy, powerful forces were at work
changing India, and a new social consciousness was arising. The
political unity of India, contact with the west, technological
advances, and even the misfortune of a common subjection, led
to new currents of thought, the slow development of industry,
and the rise of a new movement for national freedom. The
awakening of India was two-fold: she looked to the west and,
330
at the same time, she looked at herself and her own past.
The coming of the railway to India brought the industrial
age on its positive side; so far only the negative aspect, in the
shape of manufactured goods from Britain, had been in evidence.
In 1860 the duty on imported machinery, imposed so as to prevent
the industrialization of India, was removed, and large-scale
industry began to develop, chiefly with British capital. First came
the jute industry of Bengal, with its nerve centre at Dundee in
Scotland; much later, cotton mills grew up in Ahmedabad and
Bombay, largely with Indian capital and under Indian ownership;
then came mining. Obstruction from the British Government in
India continued, and an excise duty was put on Indian cotton
goods to prevent them from competing with Lancashire textiles,
even in India. Nothing, perhaps, reveals the police-state policy
of the Government of India more than the fact that they had no
department of agriculture and no department of commerce and
industry till the twentieth century. It was, I believe, chiefly due
to the donation of an American visitor, given for agricultural
improvement in India, that a department of agriculture was
started in the central government. (Even now this department is
a very small affair.) A department for commerce and industry
followed soon after, in 1905. Even then these departments func-
tioned in a very small way. The growth of industry was artificially
restricted and India's natural economic development was arrested.
Though the masses of India were desperately poor and grow-
ing poorer, a tiny fringe at the top was prospering under the
new conditions and accumulating capital. It was this fringe that
demanded political reform as well as opportunities for invest-
ment. On the political side, the Indian National Congress was
started in 1885. Commerce and industry grew slowly, and it is
interesting to note that the classes who took to them were pre-
dominantly those whose hereditary occupations for hundreds of
years had been trade and commerce. Ahmedabad, the new centre
of the textile industry, had been a famous manufacturing and
trade centre during the Mughal period and even earlier, export-
ing its products to foreign countries. The big merchants of
Ahmedabad had their own ships for this seaborne trade to Africa
and the Persian Gulf. Broach, the seaport near by, was well-
known in Graeco-Roman times.
The people of Gujrat, Kathiawar, and Cutch were traders,
manufacturers, merchants, and seafaring folk from ancient times.
Many changes took place in India, but they carried on with
their old business, adapting them to new conditions. They are
now among the most prominent leaders in industry and com-
merce. Religion or a change of religion made no difference. The
Parsees, who originally settled in Gujrat thirteen hundred years
ago, may be considered as Gujratis for this purpose. (Their
331
language has long been Gujrati.) Among the Moslems the most
prominent sects in business and industry are the Khojas, Memons,
and Bohras. All of these are converts from Hinduism, and all
come from Gujrat, Kathiawar, or Cutch. All these Gujratis not
only dominate industry and business in India, but have spread
out to Burma, Ceylon, East Africa, South Africa, and other foreign
countries.
The Marwaris from Rajputana used to control internal trade
and finance, and were to be found at all the nerve centres of
India. They were the big financiers as well as the small village'
bankers; a note from a well-known Marwari financial house
would be honoured anywhere in India, and even abroad. The
Marwaris still represent big finance in India but have added
industry to it now.
The Sindhis in the north-west have also an old commercial
tradition, and with their headquarters at Shikarpur or Hydera-
bad they used to spread out over central and western Asia and
elsewhere. To-day (that is before the war) there is hardly a port
anywhere in the world where one or more Sindhi shops cannot
be found. Some of the Punjabis also have been traditionally in
business.
The Chettys of Madras have also been leaders in business, and
banking especially, from ancient times. The word 'Chetty' is
derived from the Sanskrit 'Shreshthi,' the leader of a merchant
guild. The common appellation 'Seth' is also derived from
'Shreshthi.' The Madras Chettys have not only played an im-
portant part in south India, but they spread out all over Burma,
even in the remoter villages.
Within each province also trade and commerce were largely in
the hands of the old vaishya class, who had been engaged in
business for untold generations. They were the retail and whole-
sale dealers and moneylenders. In each village there was a bania's
shop, which dealt in the necessaries of village life and advanced
loans, on very profitable terms, to the villagers. The rural
credit system was almost entirely in the hands of these banias.
They spread even to the tribal and independent territories of the
north-west and performed important functions there. As poverty
grew agricultural indebtedness also grew rapidly, and the money-
lending establishments held mortgages on the land and eventually
acquired much of it. Thus the moneylender became the land-
lord also.
These demarcations of commercial, trading, and banking
classes from others became less clearly defined as newcomers crept
into various business; but they continued and are still marked.
Whether they are due to the caste system, or the hold of tradi-
tion, or inherited capacity, or all of these together, it is difficult
to specify. Undoubtedly among Brahmins and Kshatriyas busi-
332
ness was looked down upon, and even the accumulation of money,
though agreeable enough, was not a sufficient recompense. The
possession of land was a symbol of social position, as in feudal
times, and scholarship and learning were respected, even apart
from possession. Under British rule government service gave
prestige, security, and status, and later, when Indians were allowed
to enter the Indian Civil Service, this service, called the 'heaven-
born service' — heaven being some pale shadow of Whitehall —
became the Elysium of the English-educated classes. The pro-
fessional classes, especially lawyers, some of whom earned large
incomes in the new law courts also had prestige and high status
and attracted young men. Inevitably these lawyers took the lead
in political and social reform movements.
The Bengalis were the first to take to the law, and some of
them flourished exceedingly and cast a glamour over their pro-
fession. They were also the political leaders. They did not fit
into the growing industry, either because of lack of aptitude or
other reasons. The result has been that when industry began to
play an important part in the country's life and to influence
politics, Bengal lost its pre-eminence in the political field. The
old current, when Bengalis poured out of their province as
Government servants and in other capacities, was reversed and
people from other provinces poured into Bengal, especially in
Calcutta, and permeated the commercial and industrial life
there. Calcutta had been and continues to be the chief centre of
British capital and industry, and the English and the Scotch
dominate business there; but they are being caught up by Mar-
waris and Gujratis. Even petty trades in Calcutta are often in
non-Bengali hands. All the thousands of taxi-drivers in Calcutta,
almost without an exception, are Sikhs from the Punjab.
Bombay became the centre and headquarters of Indian-owned
industry, commerce, banking, insurance, etc. The Parsees, the
Gujratis, and Marwaris, were the leaders in all these activities,
and it is significant to note that the Maharashtrians or Marathas
have played very little part in them. Bombay is a huge cosmopo-
litan city now but its population consists mainly of Marathas
and Gujratis. The Marathas have distinguished themselves in
the professions and in scholarship; they make, as one would ex-
pect, good soldiers; and large numbers of them are employed as
workers in the textile mills. They are hardy and wiry and, as a
province, poor; they are proud of the Shivaji tradition and of
the achievements of their forefathers. The Gujratis are soft in
body, gentler, richer, and perfectly at home in trade and com-
merce. Perhaps these differences are largely due to geography,
for the Maratha country is bare and hard and mountainous
while Gujrat is rich and fertile.
It is interesting to observe these and other differences in
333
various parts of India which continue to persist, though they tend
to grow less. Madras, highly intellectual, has produced and still
produces distinguished philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists.
Bombay is now almost entirely devoted to business with all its
advantages and disadvantages. Bengal, rather backward in
industry and business, has produced some fine scientists, and
has especially distinguished itself in art and literature. The Punjab
has produced no outstanding personalities but is a go-ahead pro-
vince advancing in many fields; its people are hard-headed,
make good mechanics, and are successful in small trades and petty
industries. The United Provinces (including Delhi) are a curious
amalgam, and in some ways an epitome of India. They are the
seat of the old Hindu culture as well as of the Persian culture
that came in Afghan and Mughal times, and hence the mixture
ofthe two is most in evidence there, intermingled with the culture
of the west. There is less of provincialism there than in any other
part of India. For long they have considered themselves, and
have been looked upon by others, as the heart of India. Indeed,
in popular parlance, they are often referred to as Hindustan.
These differences, it must be noted, are geographical and not
religious. A Bengali Moslem is far nearer to a Bengali Hindu
than he is to a Punjabi Moslem; so also with others. If a num-
ber of Hindu and Moslem Bengalis happen to meet anywhere,
in India or elsewhere, they will immediately congregate together
and feel at home with each other. Punjabis, whether Moslem or
Hindu or Sikh, will do likewise. The Moslems of the Bombay
presidency (Khojas, Memons, and Bohras) have many Hindu
customs; the Khojas (they are the followers of the Aga Khan)
and the Bohras are not looked upon as orthodox by the Moslems
of the north.
Moslems, as a whole, especially in Bengal and the north, not
only kept away from English education for a long time, but also
took little part in the growth of industry. Partly this was due to
feudal modes of thought, partly (as in Roman Catholicism) to
Islam's prohibition against usury and interest on money. But,
curiously enough, among the notorious moneylenders are a
particular tribe of Pathans, who come from near the frontier.
Moslems were thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century,
backward in English education and therefore in contacts with
western thought, as also in government service and in industry.
The growth of industry in India, slow and arrested as it was,
gave the impression of progress and attracted attention. And yet
it made practically no difference to the problem of the poverty
of the masses and the overburden on the land. A few hundred
thousand workers were transferred to industry out of the scores
of millions of the unemployed and partially employed. This
change-over was so extremely small that it did not affect the
334
increasing ruralization of the country. Widespread unemploy-
ment and the pressure on land led to emigration of workers on
a substantial scale to foreign countries, often under humiliating
conditions. They went to South Africa, Fiji, Trinidad, Jamaica,
Guiana, Mauritius, Ceylon, Burma, and Malaya. The small
groups or individuals who found opportunities for growth and
betterment under foreign rule were divorced from the masses,
whose condition continued to worsen. Some capital accumulated
in the hands of these groups and conditions were gradually
created for further growth. But the basic problems of poverty
and unemployment remained untouched.
Reform and Other Movements among Hindus
and Moslems
The real impact of the west came to India in the nineteenth
century through technical changes and their dynamic conse-
quences. In the realm of ideas also there was shock and change,
a widening of the horizon which had so long been confined with-
in a narrow shell. The first reaction, limited to the small Eng-
lish educated class, was one of admiration and acceptance of
almost everything western. Repelled by some of the social customs
and practices of Hinduism, many Hindus were attracted towards
Christianity, and some notable conversions took place in Bengal.
An attempt was therefore made by Raja Ram Mohan Roy to
adapt Hinduism to this new environment and he started the
Brahmo Samaj on a more or less rationalist and social reform
basis. His successors, Keshab Chander Sen, gave it a more
Christian outlook. The Brahmo Samaj influenced the rising
middle classes of Bengal but as a religious faith it remained con-
fined to few, among whom, however, were some outstanding
persons and families. But even these families, though ardently
interested in social and religious reform, tended to go back to
the old Indian philosophic ideals of the Vedanta.
Elsewhere in India also the same tendencies were at work and
dissatisfaction arose at the rigid social forms and protean charac-
ter of Hinduism as practised. One of the most notable reform
movements was started in the second half of the nineteenth century
by a Gujarati, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, but it took root
among the Hindus of the Punjab. This was the Arya Samaj and
its slogan was 'Back to the Vedas.' This slogan really meant
an elimination of developments of the Aryan faith since the
Vedas; the Vedanta philosophy as it subsequently developed,
the central conception of monism, the pantheistic outlook, as
well as popular and cruder developments, were all alike severely
condemned. Even the Vedas were interpreted in a particular
way. The Arya Samaj was a reaction to the influence of Islam
335
and Christianity, more especially the former. It was a crusading
and reforming movement from within, as well as a defensive
organization for protection against external attacks. It intro-
duced proselytization into Hinduism and thus tended to come
into conflict with other proselytizing religions. The Arya Samaj,
which had been a close approach to Islam, tended to become a
defender of everything Hindu, against what it considered as the
encroachments of other faiths. It is significant that it spread
chiefly among the middle-class Hindus of the Punjab and the
United Provinces. At one time it was considered by the Govern-
ment as a politically revolutionary movement, but the large
numbers of Government servants in it made it thoroughly res-
pectable. It has done very good work in the spread of education
both among boys and girls, in improving the condition of women,
and in raising the status and standards of the depressed classes.
About the same period as Swami Dayananda, a different type
of person lived in Bengal and his life influenced many of the
new English-educated classes. He was Shri Ramakrishna Parama-
hansa, a simple man, no scholar but a man of faith, and not
interested in social reform as such. He was in a direct line with
Chaitanya and other Indian saints. Essentially religious and
yet broad-minded, in his search for .self-realization he had even
met Moslem and Christian mystics some of whom lived with
him for some time. He settled down at Dakshineshwar near
Calcutta, and his extraordinary personality and character
gradually attracted attention. People who went to visit him, and
some who were even inclined to scoff at this simple man of faith,
were powerfully influenced and many who had been completely
westernized felt that here was something they had missed.
Stressing the essentials of religious faith, he linked up the various
aspects of the Hindu religion and philosophy and seemed to
represent all of them in his own person. Indeed he brought
within his fold other religions also. Opposed to all sectarianism,
he emphasized that all roads lead to truth. He was like some of
the saints we read about in the past records of Asia and Europe.
Difficult to understand in the context of modern life, and yet
fitting into India's many-coloured pattern and accepted and
revered by many of her people as a man with a touch of the
divine fire about him. His personality impressed itself on all
who saw him and many who never saw him have been influenced
by the story of his life. Among these latter is Romain Rolland
who has written a story of his life and that of his chief disciple,
Swami Vivekananda.
Vivekananda, together with his brother disciples, founded the
non-sectarian Ramakrishna Mission of service. Rooted in the
past and full of pride in India's heritage, Vivekananda was yet
modern in his approach to life's problems and was a kind of
336
bridge between the past of India and her present. He was a
powerful orator in Bengali and English and a graceful writer
of Bengali prose and poetry. He was a fine figure of a man,
imposing, full of poise and dignity, sure of himself and his mission,
and at the same time full of a dynamic and fiery energy and a
passion to push India forward. He came as a tonic to the depressed
and demoralized Hindu mind and gave it self-reliance and some
roots in the past. He attended the Parliament of Religions in
Chicago in 1893, spent over a year in the U.S.A., travelled across
Europe, going as far as Athens and Constantinople, and visited
Egypt, China, and Japan. Wherever he went, he created a minor
sensation not only by his presence but by what he said and how
he said it. Having seen this Hindu Sanyasin once it was difficult
to forget him or his message. In America he was called the 'cyc-
lonic Hindu.' He was himself greatly influenced by his travels
in western countries; he admired British perseverence and the
vitality and spirit of equality of the American people. America
is the best field in the world to carry on any idea,' he wrote to a
friend in India. But he was not impressed by the manifestations
of religion in the west and his faith in the Indian philosophical
and spiritual background became firmer. India, in spite of her
degradation, still represented to him the Light.
He preached the monism of the Advaita philosophy of the
Vedanta and was convinced that only this could be the future
religion of thinking humanity. For the Vedanta was not only
spiritual but rational and in harmony with scientific investiga-
tions of external nature. 'This universe has not been created
by any extra-cosmic God, nor is it the work of any outside genius.
It is self-creating, self-dissolving, self-manifesting, One Infinite
Existence, the Brahma.' The Vedanta ideal was of the solidarity
of man and his inborn divine nature; to see God in man is the
real God-vision; man is the greatest of all beings. But 'the abstract
Vedanta must become living — poetic — in everyday life; out of
hopelessly intricate mythology must come concrete moral forms;
and out of bewildering Yogi-ism must come the most scientific
and practical psychology.' India had fallen because she had
narrowed herself, gone into her shell and lost touch with other
nations, and thus sunk into a state of 'mummified' and 'crystallized'
civilization. Caste, which was necessary and desirable in its early
forms, and meant to develop individuality and freedom, had
become a monstrous degradation, the opposite of what it was
meant to be, and had crushed the masses. Caste was a form of
social organization which was and should be kept separate from
religion. Social organizations should change with the changing
limes. Passionately, Vivekananda condemned the meaningless
metaphysical discussions and arguments about ceremonials and
especially the touch-me-notism of the upper caste. 'Our religion
337
is in the kitchen. Our God is the cooking-pot, and our religion is:
"don't touch me, I am holy." '
He kept away from politics and disapproved of the politicians
of his day. But again and again he laid stress on the necessity
for liberty and equality and the raising of the masses. 'Liberty
of thought and action is the only condition of life, of growth
and well-being. Where it does not exist, the man, the race, the
nation must go.' 'The only hope of India is from the masses.
The upper classes are physically and morally dead.' He wanted
to combine western progress with India's spiritual background.
'Make a European society with India's religion.' 'Become an
occidental of occidentals in your spirit of equality, freedom,
work, and energy, and at the same time a Hindu to the very
backbone in religious culture, and instincts.' Progressively,
Vivekananda grew more international in outlook: 'Even in
politics and sociology, problems that were only national twenty
years ago can no longer be solved on national grounds only.
They are assuming huge proportions, gigantic shapes. They can
only be solved when looked at in the broader light of interna-
tional grounds. International organizations, international com-
binations, international laws are the cry of the day. That shows
solidarity. In science, every day they are coming to a similar
broad view of matter.' And again: 'There cannot be any pro-
gress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is
becoming every day clearer that the solution of any problem
can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds.
Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this
world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed
the whole of humanity, nay the whole of life, within its scope.'
All this fitted in with Vivekananda's view of the Vedanta philo-
sophy, and he preached this from end to end of India. 'I am
thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by
holding itself apart from the community of others, and wherever
such an attempt has been made under false ideas of greatness,
policy or holiness — the result has always been disastrous to the
secluding one.' 'The fact of our isolation from all the other
nations of the world is the cause of our degeneration and its
only remedy is getting back into the current of the rest of the
world. Motion is the sign of life.'
He once wrote: 'I am a socialist not because I think it is a
perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread. The other
systems have been tried and found wanting. Let this one be
tried — if for nothing else, for the novelty of the thing.'
Vivekananda spoke of many things but the one constant re-
frain of his speech and writing was abhay — be fearless, be strong.
For him man was no miserable sinner but a part of divinity; why
should he be afraid of anything? 'If there is a sin in the world
338
it is weakness; avoid all weakness, weakness is sin, weakness is
death.' That had been the great lesson of the Upanishads. Fear
breeds evil and weeping and wailing. There had been enough
of that, enough of softness. 'What our country now wants are
muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing
can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and the secrets
of the universe, and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion,
even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meet-
ing death face to face.' He condemned 'occultism and mysti-
cism. . .these creepy things; there may be great truths in them,
but they have nearly destroyed us.... And here is the test of
truth — anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually,
and spiritually, reject as poison, there is no life in it, it cannot be
true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all-know-
ledge .... These mysticisms, in spite of some grains of truth in
them, are generally weakening... .Go back to your Upanishads,
the shining, the strengthening, the bright philosophy; and part
from all these mysterious things, all these weakening things. Take
up this philosophy; the greatest truths are the simplest things in
the world, simple as your own existence.' And beware of super-
stition. 'I would rather see everyone of you rank atheists than
superstitious fools, for the atheist is alive, and you can make
something of him. But if superstition enters, the brain is gone,
the brain is softening, degradation has seized upon the life
Mystery-mongering and superstition are always signs of weakness.'*
So Vivekananda thundered from Cape Comorin on the south-
ern tip of India to the Himalayas, and he wore himself out in
the process, dying in 1902 when he was thirty-nine years of age.
A contemporary of Vivekananda, and yet belonging much
more to a later generation, was Rabindranath Tagore. The
*Most of these extracts have been taken from'Lectures from Colombo to Almora' by Swami
Vivekananda (1933) and 'Letters of Swami Vivekananda' (1942) both published by the
Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Almora, Himalayas. In the 'Letters' p. 390, there is a
remarkable letter written by Vivekananda to a Moslem friend. In the course of this he writes :
' Whether we call it Vedantism or any ism, the truth is that Advaitism is the last word of
religion and thought and the only position from which one can look upon all religions and
sects with love. We believe it is the religion of the future enlightened humanity. The Hindus
may get the credit of arriving at it earlier than other races, they being an older race than
either the Hebrew or the Arab; yet practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all
mankind as one's own soul, isyet to be developed among the Hindus universally.
'On the other hand our experience is that if ever the followers of any religion approach to
this equality in an appreciable degree in the plane of practical work-a-day life — it may be
i/uite unconscious generally of the deeper meaning and the underlying principle of such conduct,
which the Hindus as a rule so clearly perceive — it is those of Islam and Islam alone....
'For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam
— Vedanta brain and Islam body — is the only hope.
'/see in my mind's eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious
and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body.' This letter is dated Almora, June
10th, 1898.
339
Tagore family had played a leading part in various reform
movements in Bengal during the nineteenth century. There were
men of spiritual stature in it and fine writers and artists, but
Rabindranath towered above them all, and indeed all over India
his position gradually became one of unchallenged supremacy.
His long life of creative activity covered two entire generations
and he seems almost of our present day. He was no politician,
but he was too sensitive and devoted to the freedom of the Indian
people to remain always in his ivory tower of poetry and song.
Again and again he stepped out of it, when he could tolerate
some development no longer, and in prophetic language warned
the British Government or his own people. He played a prominent
part in the Swadeshi movement that swept through Bengal in the
first decade of the twentieth century, and again when he gave
up his knighthood at the time of the Amritsar massacre. His
constructive work in the field of education, quietly begun, has
already made Santiniketan one of the focal points of Indian cul-
ture. His influence over the mind of India, and specially of succe-
ssive rising generations, has been tremendous. Not Bengali only,
the language in which he himself wrote, but all the modern
languages of India have been moulded partly by his writings.
More than any other Indian, he has helped to bring into harmony
the ideals of the east and the west, and broadened the bases of
Indian nationalism. He has been India's internationalist par
excellence, believing and working for international co-operation,
taking India's message to other countries and bringing their
message to his own people. And yet with all his internationalism,
his feet have always been planted firmly on India's soil and his
mind has been saturated with the wisdom of the Upanishads.
Contrary to the usual course of development, as he grew older he
became more radical in his outlook and views. Strong individualist
as he was, he became an admirer of the great achievements of the
Russian Revolution, especially in the spread of education, culture,
health, and the spirit of equality. Nationalism is a narrowing
creed, and nationalism in conflict with a dominating imperialism
produces all manner of frustrations and complexes. It was Tagore's
immense service to India, as it has been Gandhi's in a different
plane, that he forced the people in some measure out of their narrow
grooves of thought and made them think of broader issues affecting
humanity. Tagore was the great humanist of India.
Tagore and Gandhi have undoubtedly been the two outstand-
ing and dominating figures of India in this first half of the
twentieth century. It is instructive to compare and contrast them.
No two persons could be so different from one another in their
make up or temperaments. Tagore, the aristocractic artist, turned
democrat with proletarian sympathies, represented essentially
the cultural tradition of India, the tradition of accepting life
340
in the fullness thereof and going through it with song and dance.
Gandhi, more a man of the people, almost the embodiment of
the Indian peasant, represented the other ancient tradition of
India, that of renunciation and asceticism. And yet Tagore was
primarily the man ofthought, Gandhi of concentrated and ceaseless
activity. Both, in their different ways had a world outlook, and
both were at the same time wholly Indian. They seemed to
present different but harmonious aspects of India and to comple-
ment one another.
Tagore and Gandhi bring us to our present age. But we were
considering an earlier period and the effect produced on the
people, and especially the Hindus, by the stress laid by Viveka-
nanda and others on the past greatness of India and their pride
in it. Vivekananda himself was careful to warn his people not
to dwell too much on the past, but to look to the future. 'When,
O Lord,' he wrote, 'shall our land be free from this eternal
dwelling upon the past?' But he himself and others had evoked
that past, and there was a glamour in it, and no getting away
from it.
This looking back to the past and finding comfort and sus-
tenance there was helped by a renewed study of ancient litera-
ture and history, and later by the story of the Indian colonies in
the eastern seas, as this unfolded itself. Mrs. Annie Besant was
a powerful influence in adding to the confidence of the Hindu
middle classes in their spiritual and national heritage. There
was a spiritual and religious element about all this, and yet
there was a strong political background to it. The rising middle
classes were politically inclined and were not so much in search
of a religion; but they wanted some cultural roots to cling on to,,
something that gave them assurance of their own worth, some-
thing that would reduce the sense of frustration and humilia-
tion that foreign conquest and rule had produced. In every
country with a growing nationalism there is this search apart
from religion, this tendency to go to the past. Iran, without in
any way weakening in its religious faith, has deliberately gone
back to its pre-Islamic days of greatness and utilized this memory
to strengthen its present-day nationalism. So also in other coun-
tries. The past of India, with all its cultural variety and great-
ness, was a common heritage of all the Indian people, Hindu
Moslem, Christian, and others, and their ancestors had helped
to build it. The fact of subsequent conversion to other faiths
did not deprive them of this heritage; just as the Greeks, after
their conversion to Christianity, did not lose their pride in the
mighty achievements of their ancestors, or the Italians in the
great days of the Roman Republic and early empire. If all the
people of India had been converted to Islam or Christianity, her
cultural heritage would still have remained to inspire them and
341
give them that poise and dignity, which a long record of civilized
existence with all its mental struggles with the problems of life
gives a people.
If we had been an independent nation, all of us in this country
working together in the present for a common future would no
doubt have looked to our common past with equal pride. Indeed,
during the Mughal period, the emperors and their chief associates,
newcomers as they were, wanted to identify themselves with that
past and to share it with others. But the accidents and processes
of history, helped no doubt by man's policy and weaknesses, worked
differently, and the changes which came prevented normal
development. One would have expected that the new middle
class, which was the product of the impact from the west and of
technological and economic changes, would have a common back-
ground in Hindu and Moslem alike. To some extent this was so,
and yet differences arose which were not present, or were present
in far lesser degree, in the feudal and semi-feudal classes and the
masses. The Hindu and Moslem masses were hardly distinguishable
from each other, the old aristocracy had developed common ways
and standards. They yet followed a common culture and had
common custom and festivals. The middle classes began to
diverge psychologically and later in other ways.
To begin with, the new middle classes were almost absent
among the Moslems. Their avoidance of western education, their
keeping away from trade and industry, and their adherence to
feudal ways, gave a start to the Hindus which they profited by
and retained. British policy was inclined to be pro-Hindu and
anti-Moslem, except in the Punjab, where Moslems took more
easily to western education than elsewhere. But the Hindus had
got a big start long before the British took possession of the
Punjab. Even in the Punjab, though conditions were more equal
for the Hindu and Moslem, the Hindus had an economic advan-
tage. Anti-foreign sentiment was shared alike by the Hindu and
Moslem aristocracy and the masses. The Revolt of 1857 was a
joint affair, but in its suppression Moslems felt strongly, and to
some extent rightly, that they were the greater sufferers. This
Revolt also put an end finally to any dreams or fantasies of the
revival of the Delhi empire. That empire had vanished long ago,
even before the British arrived upon the scene. The Marathas
had smashed it and controlled Delhi itself. Ranjit Singh ruled
in the Punjab. Mughal rule had ended in the north without any
intervention of the British, and in the south also it had disintegrated.
Yet the shadow emperor sat in the Delhi palace, and though he
had become a dependant and pensioner of the Marathas and the
British successively, still he was a symbol of a famous dynasty.
Inevitably, during the Revolt the rebels tried to take advantage
of this symbol, in spite of his weakness and unwillingness. The
342
ending of the Revolt meant also the smashing of the symbol.
As the people recovered slowly from the horror of the Mutiny
days, there was a blank in their minds, a vacuum which sought
for something to fill it. Of necessity, British rule had to be accep-
ted, but the break with the past had brought something more
than a new government; it had brought doubt and confusion
and a loss of faith in themselves. That break indeed had come
long before the Mutiny, and had led to the many movements
of thought in Bengal and elsewhere to which I have already
referred. But the Moslems generally had then retired into their
shells far more than the Hindus, avoided western education, and
lived in day-dreams of a restoration of the old order. There could
be no more dreaming now, but there had to be something to which
they could cling on. They still kept away from the new education.
Gradually and after much debate and difficulty, Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan turned their minds towards English education and started
the Aligarh College. That was the only avenue leading to govern-
ment service, and the lure of that service proved powerful enough
to overcome old resentments and prejudices. The fact that Hindus
had gone far ahead in education and service was disliked, and
proved a powerful argument to do likewise. Parsees and Hindus
were also going ahead in industry, but Moslem attention was
directed to government service alone.
But even this new direction to their activities, which was really
confined to comparatively few, did not resolve the doubt and
confusion of their minds. Hindus, in like straits, had looked back
and sought consolation in ancient times. Old philosophy and
literature, art and history, had brought some comfort. Ram
Mohan Roy, Dayananda, Vivekananda, and others had started
new movements of thought. While they drank from the rich
streams of English literature their minds were also full of ancient
sages and heroes of India, their thoughts and deeds, and of the
myths and traditions which they had imbibed from their child-
hood.
Much of this was common to the Moslem masses, who were
well acquainted with these traditions. But it began to be felt,
especially by the Moslem upper classes, that it was not quite
proper for them to associate themselves with these semi-religious
traditions, that any encouragement of them would be against
the spirit of Islam. They searched for their national roots else-
where. To some extent they found them in the Afghan and
Mughal periods of India, but this was not quite enough to fill
the vacuum. Those periods were common for Hindus and Moslems
alike, and the sense of foreign intrusion had disappeared from
Hindu minds. The Mughal rulers were looked upon as Indian
national rulers, though in the case of Aurungzeb there was a
difference of opinion. It is significant that Akbar, whom the
343
Hindus especially admired, has not been approved of in recent
years by some Moslems. Last year the 400th anniversary of his
birth was celebrated in India. All classes of people, including
many Moslems, joined, but the Moslem League kept aloof because
Akbar was a symbol of India's unity.
This search for cultural roots led Indian Moslems (that is,
some of them of the middle class) to Islamic history, and to the
periods when Islam was a conquering and creative force in
Baghdad, Spain, Constantinople, central Asia, and elsewhere.
There had always been interest in this history and some contacts
with neighbouring Islamic countries. There was also the Haj
pilgrimage to Mecca, which brought Moslems from various
countries together. But all such contacts were limited and super-
ficial and did not really affect the general outlook of Indian
Moslems, which was confined to India. The Afghan kings of
Delhi, especially Muhammad Tughlaq, had acknowledged the
Khalifa (Caliph) at Cairo. The Ottoman emperors at Constan-
tinople subsequently became the Khalifas, but they were not
recognized as such in India. The Mughal Emperors in India
recognized no Khalifa or spiritual superiors outside India. It was
only after the complete collapse of the Mughal power early in
the nineteenth century that the name of the Turkish Sultan began
to be mentioned in Indian mosques. This practice was confirmed
after the Mutiny.
Thus Indian Moslems sought to derive some psychological
satisfaction from a contemplation of Islam's past greatness,
chiefly in other countries, and in the fact of the continuance
of Turkey as an independent Moslem power, practically the only
one left. This feeling was not opposed to or in conflict with
Indian nationalism; indeed, many Hindus admired and were
well acquainted with Islamic history. They sympathized with
Turkey because they considered the Turks as Asiatic victims of
European aggression. Yet the emphasis was different, and in
their case that feeling did not supply a psychological need as
it did in the case of the Moslems.
After the Mutiny the Indian Moslems had hesitated which
way to turn. The British Government had deliberately repressed
them to an even greater degree than it had repressed the Hindus,
and this repression had especially affected those sections of the
Moslems from which the new middle class, the bourgeoise, might
have been drawn. They felt down and out and were intensely
anti-British as well as conservative. British policy towards them
underwent a gradual change in the seventies and became more
favourable. This change was essentially due to the policy of
balance and counterpoise which the British Government had
consistently pursued. Still, in this process, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
played an important part. He was convinced that he could only
344
raise the Moslems through co-operation with the British authori-
ties. He was anxious to make them accept English education and
thus to draw them out of their conservative shells. He had been
much impressed by what he had seen of European civilization,
and, indeed, some of his letters from Europe indicate that he was
so dazed that he had rather lost his balance.
Sir Syed was an ardent reformer and he wanted to reconcile
modern scientific thought with Islam. This was to be done, of
course, not by attacking any basic belief, but by a rationalistic
interpretation of scripture. He pointed out the basic similarities
between Islam and Christianity. He attacked purdah (the seclu-
sion of women) among the Moslems. He was opposed to any
allegiance to the Turkish Khalifat. Above all, he was anxious
to push a new type of education. The beginnings of the national
movement frightened him, for he thought that any opposition
to the British authorities would deprive him of their help in
his educational programme. That help appeared to him to be
essential, and so he tried to tone down anti-British sentiments
among the Moslems artd to turn them away from the National
Congress which was taking shape then. One of the declared
objects of the Aligarh College he founded was 'to make the Mus-
sulmans of India worthy and useful subjects of the British crown.'
He was not opposed to the National Congress because he con-
sidered it predominantly a Hindu organization; he opposed it
because he thought it was politically too aggressive (though it
was mild enough in those days), and he wanted British help and
co-operation. He tried to show that Moslems as a whole had not
rebelled during the Mutiny and that many had remained loyal
to the British power. He was in no way anti-Hindu or communally
separatist. Repeatedly he emphasized that religious differences
should have no political or national significance. 'Do you not
inhabit the same land?' he said. 'Remember that the words
Hindu and Mohammedan are only meant for religious distinction;
otherwise all persons, whether Hindu or Mohammedan, even
the Christians who reside in this country, are all in this particular
respect belonging to one and the same nation.'
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's influence was confined to certain
sections of the upper classes among the Moslems; he did not
touch the urban or rural masses. These masses were almost
completely cut off from their upper classes and were far nearer
to the Hindu masses. While some among the Moslem upper
classes were descendants of the ruling groups during Mughal
times, the masses had no such background or tradition. Most
of them had been converted from the lowest strata of Hindu
society and were most unhappily situated, being among the
poorest and the most exploited.
Sir Syed had a number of able and notable colleagues. In his
345
rationalistic approach he was supported, among others, by Syed
Chirag Ali and Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk. His educational activi-
ties attracted Munshi Karamat Ali, Munshi Zakaullah of Delhi,
Dr. Nazir Ahmad, Maulana Shibli Nomani, and the poet Hali,
who is one of the outstanding figures of Urdu literature. Sir
Syed succeeded in so far as the beginnings of English education
among the Moslems were concerned, and in diverting the Moslem
mind from the political movement. A Mohammedan educational
conference was started and this attracted the rising Moslem middle
class in the professions and services.
None the less many prominent Moslems joined the National
Congress. British policy became definitely pro-Moslem, or rather
in favour of those elements among the Moslems who were opposed
to the national movement. But early in the twentieth century the
tendency towards nationalism and political activity became more
noticeable among the younger generation of Moslems. To divert
this and provide a safe channel for it, the Moslem League was
started in 1906 under the inspiration of the British Government
and the leadership of one of its chief supporters, the Aga Khan.
The League had two principal objects: loyalty to the British
Government and the safeguarding of Moslem interests.
It is worth noting that during the post-Mutiny period all the
leading men among Indian Moslems, including Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan, were products of the old traditional education, although
some of them added knowledge of English later and were
influenced by new ideas. The new western education had yet
produced no notable figure among them. The leading poet in
Urdu and one of the outstanding literary figures of the century
in India, was Ghalib, who was in his prime before the Mutiny.
In the early years of the twentieth century there were two
trends among the Moslem intelligentsia: one, chiefly among the
younger element, was towards nationalism, the other was a
deviation from India's past and even, to some extent, her pre-
sent, and a greater interest in Islamic countries, especially
Turkey, the seat of the Khilafat. The Pan-Islamic movement,
encouraged by Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey, had found some
response in the upper strata of Indian Moslems, and yet Sir
Syed had opposed this and written against Indians interesting
themselves in Turkey and the Sultanate. The young Turk move-
ment produced mixed reactions. It was looked upon with some
suspicion by most Moslems in India to begin with, and there
was general sympathy for the Sultan who was considered a bul-
wark against the intrigues of European powers in Turkey. But
there were others, among them Abul Kalam Azad, who eagerly
welcomed the young Turks and the promise of constitutional
and social reform that they brought. When Italy suddenly attacked
Turkey in the Tripoli War of 1911, and subsequently, during the
34C
Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, an astonishing wave of sympathy
for Turkey roused Indian Moslems. All Indians felt that sympathy
and anxiety but in the case of Moslems this was keener and some-
thing almost personal. The last remaining Moslem power was
threatened with extinction; the sheet-anchor of their faith in the
future was being destroyed. Dr. M. A. Ansari led a strong medical
mission to Turkey and even the poor subscribed; money came
more rapidly than for any proposal for the uplift of the Indian
Moslems themselves. World War I was a time of trial for the
Moslems because Turkey was on the other side. They felt helpless
and could do nothing. When the war ended their pent-up feelings
were to break out in the Khilafat movement.
The year 1912 was notable also in the development of the
Moslem mind in India because of the appearance of two new
weeklies, the Al-Hilal in Urdu and The Comrade in English.
The Al-Hilal was started by Abul Kalam Azad (the present Con-
gress President), a brilliant young man of twenty-four, who had
received his early education in Al Azhar University of Cairo
and, while yet in his teens, had become well-known for his Arabic
and Persian scholarship and deep learning. To this he added a
knowledge of the Islamic world outside India and of the reform
movements that were coursing through it, as well as of European
developments. Rationalist in outlook and yet profoundly versed
in Islamic lore and history, he interpreted scripture from a ration-
alist point of view. Soaked in Islamic tradition and with many
personal contacts with prominent Moslem leaders and reformers
in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, he was power-
fully affected by political and cultural developments in these
countries. Because of his writings he was known in the Islamic
countries probably more than any other Indian Moslem. The
wars in which Turkey became involved aroused his intense interest
and sympathy; and yet his approach was different from that of
the older Moslem leaders. He had a wider and more rationalist
outlook which kept him away from the feudal and narrowly
religious and separatist approach of these older leaders, and
inevitably made him an Indian nationalist. He had himself seen
nationalism growing in Turkey and the other Islamic countries
and he applied that knowledge to India and saw in the Indian
national movement a similar development. Other Moslems in
India were hardly aware of these movements elsewhere and,
wrapped up in their own feudal atmosphere, had little appreciation
of what was happening there. They thought in religious terms
only and if they sympathised with Turkey it was chiefly because
of that religious bond. In spite of that intense sympathy, they
were not in tune with the nationalist and rather secular move-
ments in Turkey.
Abul Kalam Azad spoke in a new language to them in his
weekly Al-Hilal. It was not only a new language in thought and
approach, even its texture was different, for Azad's style was
tense and virile, though sometimes a little difficult because of
its Persian background. He used new phrases for new ideas and
was a definite influence in giving shape to the Urdu language,
as it is to-day. The older conservative leaders among the Moslems
did not react favourably to all this and criticized Azad's opinions
and approach. Yet not even the most learned of them could
easily meet Azad in debate and argument, even on the basis of
scripture and old tradition, for Azad's knowledge of these happened
to be greater than theirs. He was a strange mixture of mediaeval
scholasticism, eighteenth century rationalism, and the modern
outlook.
There were a few among the older generation who approved
of Azad's writings, among them being the learned Maulana
Shibli Nomani, who had himself visited Turkey, and who had
been associated with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Aligarh College.
The tradition of Aligarh College was, however, different and
conservative, both politically and socially. Its trustees came from
among the princes and big landlords, typical representatives of
the feudal order. Under a succession of English principals, closely
associated with government circles, it had fostered separatist
tendencies and an anti-nationalist and anti-Congress outlook.
The chief aim kept before its students was to enter government
service in the subordinate ranks. For that a pro-government
attitude was necessary and no truck with nationalism and sedi-
tion. The Aligarh College group had become the leaders of the
new Moslem intelligentsia and influenced sometimes openly,
more often from behind the scenes, almost every Moslem move-
ment. The Moslem League came into existence largely through
their efforts.
Abul Kalam Azad attacked this stronghold of conservatism
and anti-nationalism not directly but by spreading ideas which
undermined the Aligarh tradition. This very youthful writer
and journalist caused a sensation in Moslem intellectual circles
and, though the elders frowned upon him, his words created a
ferment in the minds of the younger generation. That ferment
had already started because of events in Turkey, Egypt, and Iran,
as well as the development of the Indian nationalist movement.
Azad gave a definite trend to it by pointing out that there was
no conflict between Islam and sympathy for Islamic countries
and Indian nationalism. This helped in bringing the Moslem
League nearer to the Congress. Azad had himself joined the
League, whilst yet a boy, at its first session in 1906.
The Al-Hilal was not approved of by the representatives of
the British Government. Securities were demanded from it under
the Press Act and ultimately its press was confiscated in 1914.
348
Thus ended the Al-Hilal after a brief existence of two years.
Azad thereupon brought out another weekly, the Al-Balagh,
but this, too, ended in 1916 when Azad was interned by the
British Government. For nearly four years he was kept in intern-
ment, and when he came out at last he took his place imme-
diately among the leaders of the National Congress. Ever since
then he has been continuously in the highest Congress Execu-
tive, looked upon, in spite of his youthful years, as one of the
elders of the Congress, whose advice both in national and poli-
tical matters as well as in regard to the communal and minority
questions is highly valued. Twice he had been Congress presi-
dent, and repeatedly he has spent long terms in prison.
The other weekly that was started in 1912, some months before
the Al-Hilal was The Comrade. This was in English and it influen-
ced especially the younger English-educated generation of Moslems.
It was edited by Maulana Mohammad Ali, who was an odd
mixture of Islamic tradition and an Oxford education. He began
as an adherent of the Aligarh tradition and was opposed to any
aggressive politics. But he was far too able and dynamic a per-
sonality to remain confined in that static framework, and his
language was always vigorous and striking. The annulment of
the Partition of Bengal in 1911 had given him a shock and his
faith in the bona fides of the British Government had been shaken.
The Balkan Wars moved him and he wrote passionately in
favour of Turkey and the Islamic tradition it represented. Pro-
gressively he grew more anti-British and the entry of Turkey in
World War I completed the process. A famous and enormously
long article of his (his speeches anb writings did not err on the side
of brevity or conciseness) in The Comrade entitled 'The Choice of
the Turks' put an end to The Comrade which was stopped by the
government. Soon after, government arrested him and his brother
Shaukat Ali and interned them for the duration of the war and a
year after. They were released at the end of 1919 and both imme-
diately joined the National Congress. The Ali Brothers played a
very prominent part in the Khilafat agitation and in Congress
politics in the early twenties and suffered prison for it. Moham-
mad Ali presided over an annual session of the Congress and was
for many years a member of its highest executive committee. He
died in 1930.
The change that took place in Mohammad Ali was symbolic
of the changing mentality of the Indian Moslems. Even the
Moslem League, founded to isolate the Moslems from nationalist
currents and completely controlled by reactionary and semi-
feudal elements, was forced to recognize the pressure from the
younger generation. It was drifting, though somewhat unwil-
lingly, with the tide of nationalism and coming nearer to the
Congress. In 1913 it changed its creed of loyalty to government
349
to a demand for self-government for India. Maulana Abul Kalam
Azad had advocated this change in his forceful writings in the Al-Hilal.
Kemal Pasha. Nationalism in Asia. Iqbal
Kemal Pasha was naturally popular in India with Moslems and
Hindus alike. He had not only rescued Turkey from foreign
domination and disruption but had foiled the machinations of
European imperialist powers, especially England. But as the
Ataturk's policy unfolded itself — his lack of religion, his aboli-
tion of the Sultanate and Khilafat, the building up of a secular
state, and his disbandment of religious orders — that popularity
waned so far as the more orthodox Moslems were concerned and
a silent resentment against his modernist policy rose among
them. This very policy, however, made him more popular among
the younger generation of both Hindus and Moslems. The
Ataturk partly destroyed the dream structure that had gradually
grown up in the Indian Moslem mind ever since the days of the
Mutiny. Again a kind of vacuum was created. Many Moslems
filled this vacuum by joining the nationalist movement, many
had of course already joined it previously; others stood aloof,
hesitant and doubtful. The real conflict was between feudal
modes of thought and modern tendencies. The feudal leadership
had for the moment been swept away by the mass Khilafat move-
ment, but that movement itself had no solid basis in social and
economic conditions or in the needs of the masses. It had its
centre elsewhere, and when the core itself was eliminated by the
Ataturk the superstructure collapsed, leaving the Moslem masses
bewildered and disinclined to any political action. The old
feudal leaders, who had lain low, crept back into prominence,
helped by British policy, which had always supported them. But
they could not come back to their old position of unquestioned
leadership for conditions had changed. The Moslems were also
throwing up, rather belatedly, a middle class, and the very ex-
perience of a mass political movement, under the leadership of
the National Congress, had made a vital difference.
Though the mentality of the Moslem masses and the new
growing middle class was shaped essentially by events, Sir
Mohamad Iqbal played an important part in influencing the
latter and especially the younger generation. The masses were
hardly affected by him. Iqbal had begun by writing powerful
nationalist poems in Urdu which had become popular. During
the Balkan Wars he turned to Islamic subjects. He was influence-
ed by the circumstances then prevailing and the mass feeling
among the Moslems, and he himself influenced and added to the
intensity of these sentiments. Yet he was very far from being a
mass leader; he was a poet, an intellectual and a philosopher
350
with affiliations to the old feudal order; he came from Kashmiri
Brahmin stock. He supplied in fine poetry, which was written
both in Persian and Urdu, a philosophic background to the
Moslem intelligentsia and thus diverted its mind in a separatist
direction. His popularity was no doubt due to the quality of
his poetry, but even more so it was due to his having fulfilled
a need when the Moslem mind was searching for some anchor
to hold on to. The old pan-Islamic ideal had ceased to have any
meaning; there was no Khilafat and every Islamic country, Tur-
key most of all, was intensely nationalist, caring little for other
Islamic peoples. Nationalism was in fact the dominant force in
Asia as elsewhere, and in India the nationalist movement had
grown powerful and challenged British rule repeatedly. That
nationalism had a strong appeal to the Moslem mind in India,
and large numbers of Moslems had played a leading part in the
struggle for freedom. Yet Indian nationalism was dominated by
Hindus and had a Hinduised look. So a conflict arose in the
Moslem mind; many accepted that nationalism, trying to in-
fluence it in the direction of their choice; many sympathised
with it and yet remained aloof, uncertain; and yet many others
began to drift in a separatist direction for which Iqbal's poetic
and philosophic approach had prepared them.
This, I imagine, was the background out of which, in recent
years, arose the cry for a division of India. There were many
reasons, many contributory causes, errors and mistakes on every
side, and especially the deliberate separatist policy of the British
Government. But behind all these was this psychological back-
ground, which itself was produced, apart from certain historical
causes, by the delay in the development of a Moslem middle
class in India. Essentially the internal conflict in India, apart
from the nationalist struggle against foreign domination, is bet-
ween the remnants of the feudal order and modernist ideas and
institutions. That conflict exists on the national plane as well as
within each major group, Hindu, Moslem, and others. The
national movement, as represented essentially by the National
Congress, undoubtedly represents the historic process of growth
towards these new ideas and institutions, though it tries to adapt
these to some ofthe old foundations. Because ofthis, it has attracted
to its fold all manner of people, differing widely among themselves.
On the Hindu side, an exclusive and rigid social order has come
in the way of growth, and what is more, frightened other groups.
But this social order itself has been undermined and is fast losing
its rigidity and, in any event, is not strong enough to obstruct the
growth of the national movement in its widest political and social
sense, which has developed enough impetus to go ahead in spite
of obstacles. On the Moslem side, feudal elements have con-
tinued to be strong and have usually succeeded in imposing their
351
leadership on their masses. There has been a difference of a gene-
ration or more in the development of the Hindu and Moslem
middle classes, and that difference continues to show itself in many
directions, political, economic, and other. It is this lag which
produces a psychology of fear among the Moslems.
Pakistan, the proposal to divide India, however much it may
appeal emotionally to some, is of course no solution for this
backwardness, and it is much more likely to strengthen the hold
of feudal elements for some time longer and delay the economic
progress of the Moslems. Iqbal was one of the early advocates
of Pakistan and yet he appears to have realized its inherent
danger and absurdity. Edward Thompson has written that, in
the course of a conversation, Iqbal told him that he had advo-
cated Pakistan because of his position as president of the Moslem
League session, but he felt sure that it would be injurious to India
as a whole and to Moslems specially. Probably he had changed
his mind, or he had not given much thought to the question
previously, as it had assumed no importance then. His whole
outlook on life does not fit in with the subsequent developments
of the idea of Pakistan or division of India.
During his last years Iqbal turned more and more towards
socialism. The great progress that Soviet Russia had made attract-
ed him. Even his poetry took a different turn. A few months
before his death, as he lay on his sick bed, he sent for me and
I gladly obeyed the summons. As I talked to him about many
things I felt that how much we had in common, in spite of dif-
ferences, and how easy it would be to get on with him. He was
in reminiscent mood and wandered .from one subject to another,
and I listened to him, talking little myself. I admired him and
his poetry, and it pleased me greatly to feel that he liked me
and had a good opinion of me. A little before I left him he said to
me: 'What is there in common between Jinnah and you? He
is a politician, you are a patriot.' I hope there is still much in
common between Mr. Jinnah and me. As for my being a patriot
I do not know that this is a particular qualification in these days,
at least in the limited sense of the word. Greatly attached as I am
to India, I have long felt that something more than national
attachment is necessary for us in order to understand and solve
even our own problems, and much more so those of the world as
a whole. But Iqbal was certainly right in holding that I was not
much of a politician, although politics had seized me and made
ine their victim.
Heavy Industry Begins. Tilak and Gokhaie
Separate Electorates
In my desire to explore the background of the Hindu-Moslem
352
problems and understand what lay behind the new demand for
Pakistan and separation, I have jumped over half a century.
During this period many changes came, not so much in the
external apparatus of government as in the temper of the people.
Some trivial constitutional developments took place and these
are often paraded, but they made no difference whatsoever to the
authoritarian and all-pervasive character of British rule; nor
did they touch the problems of poverty and unemployment. In
1911 Jamshedji Tata laid the foundations of heavy industry in
India by starting steel and iron works in what came to be known
as Jamshedpur. Government looked with disfavour on this and
other attempts to start industries and in no way encouraged
them. It was chiefly with American expert help that the steel
industry was started. It had a precarious childhood but the war
of 1914-18 came to its help. Again it languished and was in danger
of passing into the hands of British debenture holders, but natio-
nalist pressure saved it.
An industrial proletariat was growing up in India; it was
unorganized and helpless, and the terribly low standards of the
peasantry, from which it came, prevented wage increases and
improvement. So far as unskilled labour was concerned, there
were millions of unemployed persons who could be drawn upon
and no strike could succeed in these conditions. The first Trade
Union Congress was organized round about 1920. The numbers
of this new proletariat were not sufficient to make any difference
to the Indian political scene; they were a bucketful in a sea of
peasants and workers on the land. In the 'twenties the voice of
industrial labour began to be heard, but it was feeble. It might
have been ignored but for the fact that the Russian Revolution
had forced people to attach importance to the industrial proletariat.
Some big and well-organized strikes also compelled attention.
The peasant, though he was everywhere and his problem was
the supreme problem of India, was even more silent and for-
gotten by the political leaders and Government alike. The early
stages of the political movement were dominated by the ideo-
logical urges of the upper middle classes, chiefly the professional
classes and those looking forward to a place in the administra-
tive machine. With the coming-of-age of the National Congress,
which had been founded in 1885, a new type of leadership
appeared, more aggressive and defiant and representing the much
larger numbers of the lower middle classes as well as students
and young men. The powerful agitation against the partition of
Bengal had thrown up many able and aggressive leaders there of
this type, but the real symbol of the new age was Bal Gangadhar
Tilak, from Maharashtra. The old leadership was represented
also by a Maratha, a very able and a younger man, Gopal Krishna
Gokhale. Revolutionary slogans were in the air, tempers ran
353
high and conflict was inevitable. To avoid this the old patriarch
of the Congress, Dadabhai Naoroji, universally respected and
regarded as the father of the country, was brought out of his
retirement. The respite was brief and in 1907 the clash came,
resulting apparently in a victory for the old moderate section.
But this had been won because of organizational control and the
then narrow franchise of the Congress. There was no doubt that
the vast majority of politically minded people in India favoured
Tilak and his group. The Congress lost much of its importance
and interest shifted to other activities. Terroristic activity appeared
in Bengal. The example set by Russian and Irish revolutionaries
was being followed.
Moslem young men were also being affected by these revolu-
tionary ideas. The Aligarh College had tried to check this ten-
dency and now, under Government inspiration, the Aga Khan
and others started the Moslem League to provide a political
platform for Moslems and thus keep them away from the Con-
gress. More important still, and of vital significance to India's
future development, it was decided to introduce separate electo-
rates for Moslems. Henceforward Moslems could only stand for
election and be elected by separate Moslem electorates. A poli-
tical barrier was created round them isolating them from the rest
of India and reversing the unifying and amalgamating process
which had been going on for centuries, and which was inevitably
being speeded up by technological developments. This barrier
was a small one at first, for the electorates were very limited, but
with every extension of the franchise it grew and affected the
whole structure of public and social life, like some canker which
corrupted the entire system. It poisoned municipal and local self-
government and ultimately it led to fantastic divisions. There
came into existence (much later) separate Moslem trade unions
and students' organizations and merchants' chambers. Because
the Moslems were backward in all these activities, these orga-
nizations were not real organic growths from below, but were
artificially created from above, and their leadership was held by
the old semi-feudal type of person. Thus, to some extent, the
Moslem middle classes and even the masses were isolated from
the currents of growth which were influencing the rest of India.
There were vested interests enough in India created or preserved
by the British Government. Now an additional and powerful
vested interest was created by separate electorates.
It was not a temporary evil which tended to fade away with
developing political consciousness. Nurtured by official policy, it
grew and spread and obscured the real problems before the
country, whether political, social, or economic. It created divi-
sions and ill-feeling where there had been none previously, and
it actually weakened the favoured group by increasing a tend-
354
ency to depend on artificial props and not to think in terms of
self-reliance.
The obvious policy in dealing with groups or minorities which
were backward educationally and economically was to help them
in every way to grow and make up these deficiencies, especially
by a forward educational policy. Nothing of this kind was done
either for the Moslems or for other backward minorities, or for
the depressed classes who needed it most. The whole argument
centred in petty appointments in the subordinate public services,
and instead of raising standards all round, merit was often
sacrificed.
Separate electorates thus weakened the groups that were al-
ready weak or backward, they encouraged separatist tendencies
and prevented the growth ofnational unity, they were the nega-
tion of democracy, they created new vested interests of the most
reactionary kind, they lowered standards, and they diverted
attention from the real economic problems of the country which
were common to all. These electorates, first introduced among
the Moslems, spread to other minorities and groups till India
became a mosaic of these separate compartments. Possibly they
may have done some good for a little while, though I am unable
to spot it, but undoubtedly the injury they have caused to every
department of Indian life has been prodigious. Out of them have
grown all manner of separatist tendencies and finally the demand
for a splitting up of India.
Lord Morley was the Secretary of State for India when these
separate electorates were introduced. He resisted them, but ulti-
mately agreed under pressure from the Viceroy. He has pointed
out in his diary the dangers inherent in such a method and how
they would inevitably delay the development of representative
institutions. Probably this was exactly what the Viceroy and his
colleagues intended. In the Montague-Chelmsford Report on
Indian Constitutional Reform (1918) the dangers of these com-
munal electorates were again emphasized: 'Division by creeds
and classes means the creation of political camps organized against
j each other, and teaches men to think as partisans and not as
citizens... .We regard any system of communal electorates,
1 therefore, as a very serious hindrance to the development of the
1 self-governing principle.'
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