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Indian Unrest. Sir Valentine Chirol
Читать онлайн.Название Indian Unrest
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isbn 4057664600950
Автор произведения Sir Valentine Chirol
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
These are the two questions which the present situation in India most frequently and obviously suggests, but it may be doubted whether they by any means cover the whole field of potential developments. They are based apparently upon the assumption that Indian unrest, even in its most extreme forms, is merely the expression of certain political aspirations towards various degrees of emancipation from British tutelage, ranging from a larger share in the present system of administration to a complete revolution in the existing relations between Great Britain and India, and that, the issues thus raised being essentially political, they can be met by compromise on purely political lines. This assumption ignores, I fear, certain factors of very great importance, social, religious, and economic, which profoundly affect, if they do not altogether overshadow, the political problem. The question to which I propose to address myself is whether Indian unrest represents merely, as we are prone to imagine, the human and not unnatural impatience of subject races fretting under an alien rule which, however well intentioned, must often be irksome and must sometimes appear to be harsh and arbitrary; or whether to-day, in its more extreme forms at any rate, it does not represent an irreconcilable reaction against all that not only British rule but Western civilization stands for.
I will not stop at present to discuss how far the lamentable deficiencies of the system of education which we have ourselves introduced into India have contributed to the Indian unrest. That that system has been productive of much good few will deny, but few also can be so blind as to ignore the fact that it tends on the one hand to create a semi-educated proletariate, unemployed and largely unemployable, and on the other hand, even where failure is less complete, to produce dangerous hybrids, more or less superficially imbued with Western ideas, and at the same time more or less completely divorced from the realities of Indian life. Many other circumstances also which have helped the promoters of disaffection I must reserve for subsequent discussion. Some of them are economic, such as the remarkable rise in prices during the last decade. This has seriously enhanced the cost of living in India and has specially affected the very classes amongst whom disaffection is most widespread. The clerk, the teacher, the petty Government official, whose exiguous salaries have remained the same, find themselves to-day relatively, and in many cases actually, worse off than the artisan or even the labourer, whose wages have in many cases risen in proportion to the increased cost of living. Plague, which in the course of the last 14 years has carried off over 6,000,000 people, and two terrible visitations of famine have caused in different parts of the country untold misery and consequent bitterness. On the other hand, the growth of commerce and industry and the growing interest taken by all classes in commercial and industrial questions have led to a corresponding resentment of the fiscal restraints placed upon India by the Imperial Government for the selfish benefit, as it is contended, of the British manufacturer and trader. Much bad blood has undoubtedly been created by the treatment of British Indians in South Africa and the attitude adopted in British Colonies generally towards Asiatic immigrants. The social relations between the two races in India itself—always a problem of infinite difficulty—have certainly not been improved by the large influx of a lower class of Europeans which the development of railways and telegraphs and other industries requiring technical knowledge have brought in their train. Nor can it be denied that the growing pressure of office work as well as the increased facilities of home leave and frequent transfers from one post to another have inevitably to some extent lessened the contact between the Anglo-Indian official and the native population. Of more remote influences which have indirectly reacted upon the Indian mind it may suffice for the present to mention the South African War, which lowered the prestige of our arms, and the Russo-Japanese War, which was regarded as the first blow dealt to the ascendency of Europe over Asia, though it may be worth noting that in his novel, "The Prince of Destiny," Mr. Surat Kumar Ghosh lays repeated emphasis on the impression produced in India some years earlier by the defeat of the Italian forces in Abyssinia. Each of the above points has its own importance and deserves to be closely studied, for upon the way in which we shall in the future handle some of the delicate questions which they raise will largely depend our failure or our success in coping with Indian unrest—that is, in preventing its invasion of other classes than those to which it has been hitherto confined. But the clue to the real spirit which informs Indian unrest must be sought elsewhere.
Two misconceptions appear to prevail very widely at home with regard to the nature of the unrest. The first is that disaffection of a virulent and articulate character is a new phenomenon in India; the second is that the existing: disaffection represents a genuine, if precocious and misdirected, response on the part of the Western educated classes to the democratic ideals of the modern Western world which our system of education has imported into India. It is easy to account for the prevalence of both these misconceptions. We are a people of notoriously short memory, and, when a series of sensational dastardly crimes, following on a tumultuous agitation in Bengal and a campaign of incredible violence in the native Press, at last aroused and alarmed the British public, the vast majority of Englishmen were under the impression that since the black days of the Mutiny law and order had never been seriously assailed in India, and they therefore rushed to the conclusion that, if the pax Britannica had been so rudely and suddenly shaken, the only possible explanation lay in some novel wave of sentiment or some grievous administrative blunder which had abruptly disturbed the harmonious relations between the rulers and the ruled. People had forgotten that disaffection in varying forms and degrees of intensity has existed at all times amongst certain sections of the population, and under the conditions of our rule can hardly be expected to disappear altogether. Whether British statesmanship has always sufficiently reckoned with its existence is another question. More than 30 years ago, for instance, the Government of India had to pass a Bill dealing with the aggressive violence of the vernacular Press on precisely the same grounds that were alleged in support of this year's Press Bill, and with scarcely less justification, whilst just 13 years ago two British officials fell victims at Poona to a murderous conspiracy, prompted by a campaign of criminal virulence in the Press, closely resembling those which have more recently robbed India of many valuable lives.
To imagine that Indian unrest has been a sudden growth because its outward manifestations have assumed new and startling forms of violence is a dangerous delusion; and no less misleading is the assumption that it is merely the outcome of Western education or the echo of Western democratic aspirations, because it occasionally, and chiefly for purposes of political expediency, adopts the language of Western demagogues. Whatever its modes of expression, its main spring is a deep-rooted antagonism to all the principles upon which Western society, especially in a democratic country like England, has been built up. It is in that antagonism—in the increasing violence of that antagonism—which is a conspicuous feature of the unrest, that the gravest danger lies.
But if in this respect the problems with which we are confronted appear to me more serious and complex than official optimism is sometimes disposed to admit, I have no hesitation is saying that there is no cause for despondency if we will only realize how strong our position in India still is, and use our strength wisely and sympathetically, but, at the same time, with firmness and consistency. It is important to note at the outset that the more dangerous forms of unrest are practically confined to the Hindus, and amongst them to a numerically small proportion of the vast Hindu community. Not a single Mahomedan has been implicated in, though some have fallen victims to, the criminal conspiracies of the last few years. Not a single Mahomedan of any account is to be found in the ranks of disaffected politicians. For reasons, in fact, which I shall set forth later on, it may be confidently asserted that never before have the Mahomedans of India as a whole identified their interests and their aspirations so closely as at the present day with the consolidation and permanence of British rule. It is almost a misnomer to speak of Indian unrest. Hindu unrest would be a far more accurate term, connoting with far greater precision the forces underlying it, though to use it without reservation would be to do a grave injustice to the vast numbers of Hindus who are as yet untainted with disaffection. These include almost all the Hindu ruling chiefs and landed aristocracy, as well as the great mass of the agricultural classes which form in all parts of India the overwhelming majority