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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022968824 
 
ESSAYS ON INDIAN TOPICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE BECK, 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF THE MAHOMEDAN ANGLO-ORIENTAL COLLEGE, ALIGARH. 
 
 (Reprinted from the "Pioneer " and other papers). 
 
 ALLAHABAD: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE PIONEER PRESS. 
 
 1888. 
 
THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 TO 
 
 MY FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 AS A MARK. OF ■ 
 
 RESPECT AND AFFECTION. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 1. Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . i 
 
 2. Hyderabad (reprinted from the Pioneer) . . . . i 
 
 3. Vandalism at Bijapur (reprinted from the Bombay 
 
 Cassette) . . . . . . . . ■ • 33 
 
 4. New India (reprinted from the Aligarh Institute Gazette) . . 39 
 
 5. The National Congress (reprinted from the Pioneer) . . 63 
 
 6. Social Intercourse between Englishmen and Indians (re- 
 
 printed from the Pioneer) . . . . . . 88 
 
 7. In What Will It End ? (reprinted from the Pioneer) . . 93 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The essays which are reprinted in this book are 
 offered the public, not as forming a compilation of 
 any intrinsic value, but as contributing to the discus- 
 sion of current political topics. Indian questions 
 will bear being looked at from a good many points 
 of view. One point of view is that of the Member 
 of Parliament at Westminster ; another is that of 
 the Anglo-Indian official ; another, that of the 
 Anglicised Native of the Presidency Towns ; and 
 another, that of the thorough-going old-fashioned 
 Oriental. The standpoint of the writer of these 
 amoteur essays is that of an unofficial Englishman, 
 whose work and whose tastes bring him into frequent 
 contact with Oriental society. He speaks as one who 
 prefers living in India to living in Anglo- India, but 
 whose sympathies with the wild theories of doc- 
 trinaire politicians are much affected by the fact that 
 he has a thrdat that may be cut. In this respect, as 
 an Anglo-Indian, he stands at a disadvantage with 
 English theorists on Indian politics. For he can 
 hardly hope to attain to the impartiality and serenity 
 of the English Indo-politician, who, sitting in his 
 comfortable arm-chair, can draw up paper constitu- 
 tions for India, unbiassed by the dread lest his wife 
 and children should be butchered, or the labours 
 of his life for the improvement of the people around 
 him, his town or his country, should be swept into 
 nothingness by an overwhelming deluge. 
 
HYDERABAD. 
 
 [by a visitor]. 
 
 Most Englishmen confess to a sense of disap- 
 pointment Avhen they make their acquaintance with 
 the "Gorgeous East." They have heard, perhaps, 
 in their childhood of the Great INIoghuI, and of 
 marble palaces and priceless jewels. If they chance 
 to have studied Indian history, and to have formed 
 in their minds pictures of the fine civilisation of the 
 Mahomedan Emperors — the bravery and chivalry 
 of the nobles ; the graceful wit of the men of learn- 
 ing; the large, varied, cultivated and courteous 
 society, resplendent through its taste, famous for its 
 hospitality — they may have hoped, not unreasonably 
 perhaps, when pceans are sung daily to the progress 
 the country is making, to find society answering to 
 their romantic conceptions. Suppose them to have 
 come to the modern capital of Hindustan proper. 
 Thatched bungalows and garden parties, society 
 gossip and the dull routine of official life — it is not in 
 English society that the imagination will regale itself 
 on the hoped-for feast. If we look about for nati\e 
 society, there are the pleaders of the High Court, 
 manv rich banias, and the invading crowd of clerks in 
 their Mofus from the Imperial capital ; but magnifi- 
 cence, gallantr)-, learning and wit we look for in vain. 
 Scepticism steals on the disappointed mind, the tales 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 
 of the past seem a traveller's myth or a historian's 
 fable : until the actual seats of the old Government 
 be visited, and then the dazzling glory of the 
 Moghul buildings, even as they remain, removes 
 all doubt that the race that erected them were not, 
 as some people fancy the people of India to be, 
 semi-barbarians requiring State education to give 
 them any aspirations, but were worthy descendants 
 of the great Caliphs and Sultans, whose fame and 
 whose doings have kindled the imagination of Eu- 
 rope. If one turns round now to see the modern 
 Hindustani Musalmans, one would need to look 
 closely to assure oneself that they are really the 
 inheritors of that old civilisation. There is a tale 
 that in the recent Mohurrum riots at Delhi a rich 
 Hindu was stopped in his carriage by some Maho- 
 medans. To escape, he told them he was a Musal- 
 man. "Oh, no," they replied ; " there are no Musal- 
 mans in Delhi rich enough to drive about in good 
 carriages." Here and there may be found a small 
 knot of learned men. Here and there is a noble old 
 country family that has not fallen into the clutches of 
 the money-lenders. But, speaking generally, the 
 community is passing through an ordeal of poverty 
 that must end either in the extinction of their civilisa- 
 tion and political influence, or in the awakening 
 of their minds to the necessity of adopting the 
 modern methods of thought, which alone can secure 
 progress under a Western Government. 
 
 While, however. Upper India shows no living 
 remnant of her ancient greatness, there is still left 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 
 
 in the Deccan a kingdom that dates back from the 
 days of Mahomedan ascendancy, and that preserves 
 in some degree the aspect of the past. True, you 
 will find nothing in Hyderabad of that consummate 
 taste in architecture which the earliest bringers of a 
 new civilisation took with them into India and per- 
 fected during five centuries ; for except for the singular 
 form of mosque that adorns the city — a form which, 
 while possessing no domes and in other respects far 
 inferior to the Northern mosque, has yet an indivi- 
 duality and a charm of its own — there is less of 
 living art than may be found in the bazaars of Upper 
 India. Nor have the soldierswho accompanied Asaf 
 J ah to the Deccan, and their descendants, ever made 
 of their capital a seat of learning, such as even to 
 this day Lucknow remains. But, in spite of this, the 
 visitor to this most interesting of modern Indian 
 towns will find that the traditional magnificence of 
 the East is still not extinct in India, and that the race 
 which did such wonders in the past has kept for 
 itself a corner in which to display the pomp and 
 hospitality for which it is famous. These facts give 
 to Hyderabad a unique attraction for those who 
 find the only way to enjoy a full life in the East is 
 by studying it, and justify, it is hoped, the record- 
 ing by a casual visitor of impressions which lay 
 no pretensions to profundity. Furthermore, as this 
 Oriental State is an integral part of the British 
 Empire and is overshadowed by the British influence, 
 we find many of the same social and political 
 problems arising as in British India, and may 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 
 discover side-lights thrown on them of a most 
 instructive nature. For an occasional digression 
 on such problems no apology will be offered. 
 
 The surroundings of Hyderabad are more striking 
 than those of the cities that lie in the Gangetic plain. 
 Hills covered with huge boulders, often delicately 
 balanced on one another, break the horizon. On 
 one the fort of Golconda rises high; below it are the 
 great white tombs of the kings of the Kutb Shahi 
 dynasty and of the dancing-girls whom they loved; 
 and here sometimes on a winter night, could their 
 souls be awakened by the sounds of sweet music, 
 they might see Asiatic and European join hands to 
 waltz in the spacious verandahs. Nearer the city the 
 great Grecian palace of a nobleman covers the top of 
 another hill. But perhaps the most attractive 
 feature of the scenery is the lake by the road be- 
 tween Hyderabad and Secunderabad, which, with 
 the ever-varying colours of its smooth or ruffled 
 water, reflects with redoubled beauty the glowing 
 tints of the sunset or the deep gloom of the 
 storm. The aesthetic value of this great ornament 
 of their town is apparently appreciated by the 
 Hyderabadies, for they have made the road at its 
 side their fashionable drive. Here in the evening 
 roll by the handsome carriages of the nobles with 
 the measured tread of their cantering horsemen 
 before and behind ; here the officials, dressed in 
 the sober and elegant costume which the taste of 
 the great Sir Salar Jung introduced, greet each 
 other as their carriages pass, and exchange the 
 
INDIAN Tories. 5 
 
 latest news of the latest intrigue. The young 
 Rlusalmans gallop by on their Arabs or Walers, 
 sitting their steeds with an ease born of instinct and 
 practice ; Englishmen with their wives and daugh- 
 ters, and Parsees with their ladies in coloured silks, 
 supply that element without which no scene could 
 be considered perfect ; and stout Deccani women 
 water the road with their g/iaras. Passing from 
 the lake to the city, we come unexpectedly on the 
 centre round which the vortex of Hyderabad 
 society whirls. Outside a modest compound, con- 
 taining a bungalow that is a fair specimen of the 
 renaissance style of Hyderabad domestic architec- 
 ture, we find the road crammed with carriages ; and 
 our ears are greeted by the shrill sounds of the 
 iiaubat that, like the bagpipe to a Scotchman, 
 requires an Indian ear fully to appreciate it. This 
 is the house of an Aide-de-Camp of His Highness, 
 but the crowd of carriages outside and the number 
 of distinguished-looking people within, some beguil- 
 ing the time with a game of tennis, show that the 
 Nizam himself has for a time taken up his quarters 
 here, to be waited on daily by his officials and his 
 courtiers. Into this sanctuary let us not seek to 
 penetrate, but pass on, and driving in through a big 
 gatew-ay, erected in bastard Saracenic style, enter 
 the public gardens, which are laid out in European 
 fashion with artificial lakes and a bandstand, where 
 twice a week those who love good music may hear 
 it. We are now close to Chadarghat. a wealthy 
 suburb, containing many houses of the Mahomedan 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 
 gentry, into which if we peep we shall be struck 
 with the elegance and taste of their furniture, in 
 which they rival any to be found in India. The 
 great city lies beyond, full of people from all parts 
 of the Eastern Mahomedan world, each talking his 
 own language, mixed up with the native Telegu, 
 Here and there stand the palaces of , great nobles 
 with their interiors adorned in European style, 
 with large mirrors and magnificent furniture. In 
 the centre of the city rises a singular building, the 
 charminar, with four tall towers, and near it the 
 noble Mecca Masjid. While passing through the 
 city and by gardens with waving palm leaves and 
 goldmohur trees ablaze with crimson, we come to 
 the Mir Alum Tank, scarcely inferior in size and 
 superior in beauty to the one already described. 
 
 If the appearance of the capital of the Deccan 
 offers much to please the eye, the social and political 
 life is not less interesting to the intellect. In attempt- 
 ing any description of Hyderabad society, the first 
 people to claim our attention are the nobles. As one 
 passes the barracks in the city that are full of their 
 retainers and meets the armed horsemen that escort 
 carriages containing the infant members of their 
 families, one is transported back to the Middle Ages, 
 And, indeed, the inference is not wrong that these 
 men occupy the position rather of feudal barons than 
 of modern noblemen. For they possess enormous 
 lands, and administer justice and preserve order in 
 their own estates. The family of Shumsh-ul-Umra 
 has an income of fifty lakhs of rupees. They 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 
 
 maintain a private army of several thousand men. 
 The position of the nobles may be likened to that of 
 the Nizam and Scindhia, and the other great princes 
 under the British Government. It is extremely 
 dangerous for the Nizam to interfere with their pri- 
 vileges. Their high-sounding titles ring melodiously 
 on the ear — Asman Jah, Amir-i-Kabir, Vikar-ul- 
 Umra, Salar Jung, Munir-ul-Mulk. They have 
 characteristic virtues and vices. They pay little 
 heed to the Prophet's instructions in the matter of 
 strong drink. But the worst feature in their society 
 is their semi-barbarous zenana system. Unlike the 
 INIahomedans of Upper India, they attach no import- 
 ance to the principle of heredity as far as the mothers 
 side is concerned. In Hindustan the good families 
 pride themselves on the prevalence of monogamy. 
 In Hyderabad it is considered very poor form to have 
 only one wife. The stronsr mutual affection between 
 husband and wife that is so characteristic of the 
 Hindustani Musalmans is impossible when the 
 lady finds herself only one among twenty who share 
 the elastic affections of their spouse ; nor can he 
 himself care much for people who are mostly drawn 
 from the lower classes, and ha\e not been trained in 
 those high sentiments which, however their intellec- 
 tual education may have been neglected, animate 
 the minds of well-born Mahomedan ladies. When 
 a dutiful, loving and obedient husband is found — 
 and such exist — his exemplary conduct is held up 
 as a model in many a household. The evils 
 of this system are so numerous — bad home 
 
ESSAYS ON 
 
 education, deterioration of race by the admixture 
 of base elerhents, encouragement of licentiousness, 
 destruction of domestic happiness — that it is sur- 
 prising to find so handsome a balance of virtues in 
 the Hyderabad nobleman. Let us place his cour- 
 age and manliness first of all. He is not like the 
 Lucknow Nawab, an effeminate debauchee, but is 
 fond of manly sports and games — riding, shooting, 
 tent-pegging, polo — such things as become a soldier. 
 He prefers horses to pigeons, and tiger-shooting to 
 quail fighting. Here is a tale of a Hyderabad noble. 
 His son had abscess of the liver, and an operation 
 was necessary. The doctor proposed administering 
 chloroform. The idea provoked the old man's 
 scorn : — " There is no need of chloroform," he said: 
 " he is my son. If you want to cut a hole in him, 
 cut away. If he dies through it, let him die." The 
 operation was performed without chloroform, and the 
 young man never flinched. Then the hospitality of 
 the Hyderabad nobleman is magnificent and unri- 
 valled in India. His dinner parties are held in the 
 gardens of his palace, which are illuminated for the 
 occasion with innumerable lanterns, while, surround- 
 ing the shamiana under which the guests sit, the 
 electric light throws its rays. Everything is done in 
 the finest style, from the menu to the music which 
 the band plays at intervals. At these entertain- 
 ments there may be as many as five or seven 
 hundred guests. A further virtue in the Hyderabad 
 nobleman is the wonderful way in which he has 
 shaken himself free from those prejudices against 
 
INDIAN TOMCS. 
 
 dining with English people and learning English 
 which still fetter the nobility of Upper India. The 
 objection to dining with Christians is practically- 
 unknown among the Musalmans of Hyderabad. 
 Moreover, while the upper classes of Hindustan still 
 hold back from teaching their sons English, there 
 are in Hyderabad English schools especially for the 
 sons of noblemen. Every year members of the Hy- 
 derabad aristocracy visit Europe. This means that a 
 new and, it is to be hoped, invigorating influence is 
 beginning to be felt. The originator of this social 
 revolution was the late Sir Salar Jung, the 
 great figure who, though dead, still overpowers 
 with his influence the Hyderabad State. Certainly 
 the Hyderabad nobility may boast that they could 
 produce one man who had scarce his equal in the 
 peninsula among Europeans or Natives. The able 
 administrator and consummate diplomatist, who 
 rescued the State from the confusion and anarchy 
 that were on the point of engulphing it, and who 
 knew how, in spite of immense disadvantages, to 
 hold in check a big encroaching force — this great 
 man, whose character and motives were as lofty as 
 his ability and statesmanship were profound, has 
 left the stamp of his personality no less on the 
 society, dress and manners, than on the politics of 
 Hyderabad. 
 
 Two facts in the social life of Hyderabad call for 
 special attention. The first is the absence of that 
 animosity between Mahomedan and Hindu \\hich 
 runs to such heights in British India. The second 
 
10 ESSAYS ON 
 
 is. the amount of social intercourse and the compara- 
 tively cordial relationship that exist between 
 Englishmen and Natives. Confining ourselves for 
 the present to the former, let us ask its cause. 
 This is not an easy question to answer, and in 
 venturing a few remarks it is not intended to do 
 more than throw out hints towards its solution. 
 We may observe, first, that throughout Native 
 India, with the exception perhaps of Kashmir, 
 Hindu and Mahomedan agree better than they do 
 in British India; and, moreover, that as. English 
 education advances, the animosity between the two 
 increases. That it is worse in Delhi, which has 
 been English territory for a longer time, than in 
 Lucknow. That it is stronger among those who have 
 learnt English in the colleges than among the old- 
 fashioned taluqdars and the villagers. That in 
 Bundelkhand, where society is. very old-fashioned, 
 the Rajas are quite Islamised in their customs and 
 thoughts ; while in Calcutta, where English influence 
 has been longest, the anti-Mahomedan feeling 
 reaches its greatest height, and the object of the 
 Hindu community seems to be to root out the 
 Islamic influences that have been instilled intoit for 
 centuries, and to fix the ideal of their society as what 
 they supposfe it to have been in prehistoric times. 
 If in conjunction with these facts*the observation be 
 made that this increase of hostility between the two 
 rival sections is an advantageous thing for British 
 rule, the, conclusion seems to spring naturally out of 
 these premises that the animosity has be€n fostered 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. II 
 
 by the English with the object of strengthening their 
 position. And this, indeed, is the conclusion that 
 some do really arrive at. But a little consideration 
 will show that the hypothesis is quite insufficient to 
 account for the facts. It- may be admitted that in 
 the accounts presented of the rule of our predeces- 
 sors for the edification of Young India, the histori- 
 ans have not been overanxious to single out the 
 brightest features for administration ; just as we 
 should not look to Anglo-India for the most chari- 
 table exposition of Russian virtues, or to St. 
 Petersburg for the most glowing eulogies of 
 British Indian rule. We have no reason to expect 
 a superhuman impartiality. It may also be sup- 
 posed that the wisdom- of the maxim Divide 
 et i^npera has not been lost on the great Indian 
 statesmen. But those who observe closely the 
 effects of Government policy on the people will 
 not credit Government with one tithe of the 
 influence necessary for effecting so great a iiesult. 
 Government can collect a great revenue and wield 
 enormous armies, but it could not introduce the 
 metrical system of weights and measures. Its en- 
 deavours to effect agricultural reforms are attended 
 with microscopical results. Moreover, from the 
 way in which Government singles out the weakest and 
 most timid classes for high offices, and attends more 
 to the expostulations of penmen than to the wishes 
 of swordsmen — as is proved by the concessions it 
 makes in the matter of the Civil Service in answer 
 to the demands of the native press and its unreadiness 
 
12 ESSAYS ON 
 
 to gratify in a similar way the aspirations of its 
 native soldiers — it would not seem that Government 
 is very nervous as to the foundation of its political 
 stability, and anxious to strengthen them by deep 
 policy : while, last of all, the manifest desire of 
 Government to prevent outbreaks of the peace, and 
 to put them down as quickly as possible when they 
 occur, argues the honesty of its motives and the wish 
 to encourage good- will. Those who have watched the 
 working of the District Officers, who, in the eyes of 
 the populace, are the embodiment and incarnation of 
 the Government, will testify to their earnest efforts 
 to maintain peace between the two communities. 
 The policy explanation must therefore be abandoned. 
 The cause most generally assigned is that the Hindu 
 learning history and reading of the oppressions his 
 ancestors suffered under the Mahomedan invaders ; 
 finding himself, moreover, growing wealthier and 
 more influential, while the Mahomedan is growing 
 poorer ; thinks that now he will have his revenge on 
 his former master. The following facts are worthy 
 of note : that wherever one community is in a very 
 small minority and unable to pose as a rival to the 
 other, there the animosity is but slight. And when 
 there is a common head to whom all are devotedly 
 attached, the sentiment of personal loyalty, which is 
 a much stronger sentiment in India than national 
 feeling, acts as a stronger bond. Such is the case 
 in Hyderabad, where the Hindu nobles, whose 
 ancestors served under Asaf Jah, would not yield an 
 inch to the Mahomedans in their loyalty to the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS, 13 
 
 Nizam. This fact should be taken note of by those 
 politicians who think to create unity by conjuring 
 with the word "native" and establishing as a cult 
 hatred of the Englishman ; whereas the only 
 possibility, apart from arms, of holding the different 
 classes in India together is by the growth of an 
 Imperial sentiment embracing the Empire, to 
 override and harmonise the diverse national 
 sentiments that, though rudimentary, are daily 
 gathering force. Some look to English culture for 
 giving a common basis of sympathy, but it may be 
 worth pointing out that Western thought tends to 
 cut one bond that already exists, the faqir, who 
 whether alive or in his tomb, whether as Hindu 
 astrologer or departed Mahomedan saint, elicits the 
 unbounded devotion of both sections of the 
 community. It may be doubted whether a 
 common reverence for the pir is not a stronger 
 bond of union than a common acquaintance with 
 Shakespeare. As a further cause of the antag- 
 onism between the two communities, it is possible 
 that the social disturbance created by our promis- 
 cuous system of education, with our equally pro- 
 miscuous method of promoting men of all classes of 
 society to high office, may have obliterated the old 
 aristocratic landmarks which gave Hindus and 
 Mahomedans of good breeding common sympathies 
 as opposed to the lower orders, and may have clear- 
 ed the ground for a combination based only on com- 
 mon faith. If this be true, perhaps the Hyderabad 
 school for the sons of noblemen may preserve the 
 
14 ESSAYS ON 
 
 sympathy that exists between the Mahomedan and 
 Hindu nobles, and so maintain a social barrier against 
 the inroads of race animosity. But even in Hyder- 
 abad there are indications that the entente cordiale will 
 become weakened with the spread of knowledge. 
 And indeed, considering the immense strength of 
 the nationality feeling in modern Europe, where it 
 will thrive on the least possible pretext, as in Ire- 
 land — in startling contrast to India, where the senti- 
 ment of nationality is in no race strong, and poli- 
 tical ethics put loyalty to a chief far higher than 
 loyalty to a nation ; where, in short, personal senti- 
 ments are stronger than civic or national ones — it 
 is only to be expected that the result of the intro- 
 duction of Western thought and of Western politi- 
 cal institutions into India will be to increase the 
 feeling of nationality, not as the ridiculous pretence 
 of some would have it, thereby forming one common 
 nationality, but creating strongly opposed political 
 units. Future history alone can show whether the 
 existence of these sentiments will tend to mutual 
 destruction, or by the peaceful rivalry they engender 
 to the advancement of all communities ; whether or 
 no ultimately, after the lapse of centuries, by the 
 adoption of a common faith and free inter-marriage, 
 any common Indian nationality will emerge in 
 answer to the aspirations of those who profess to 
 desire it. But, alas ! where shall we be then ? 
 
 The second social fact towards which we have 
 drawn attention is the much more cordial relation- 
 ship existing here between Englishmen and Natives 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 15 
 
 than in British India. At the dinners to which 
 allusion has been made, Native gentlemen take in 
 English ladies, who after dinner visit the ladies in 
 the zenana. The English Club contains many 
 Native gentlemen. The English officers play polo 
 with, His Highness's officers. Cosmopolitan picnic 
 parties are one of the amusements of the winter. 
 In fact, as regards social intercourse, Hyderabad 
 easily takes the first position among the cities of 
 India. What is the cause of this state of things ? 
 Were an Indian Thackeray exposing the weaknesses 
 of the society of his day, he might point to the fact 
 that the Natives here have power and wealth, give 
 dinners that would satisfy an epicure, and entertain- 
 ments that no one would willingly miss. Did not 
 the present Sir Salar Jung engage the best violinist 
 that has been to India for years to please his guests ? 
 "Yes," we indignantly answer; "but the Natives here 
 are really gentlemen, and understand English 
 manners, and can talk as well as our own countrymen. 
 We have not met people like them before ; if we 
 had, we should have behaved in the same way." 
 Our social cynic replies triumphantly that many of 
 these very men were once minor officials in British 
 India, but that then as they were neither wealthy nor 
 powerful their merits were undiscovered. No doubt 
 when a man employs a first class tailor, lives in 
 a well-furnished house, and drives about in a 
 stylish equipage, his social qualities are more easily 
 cognizable by the average man than when they de- 
 pend for recognition on the human mind within. It 
 
l6 ESSAYS ON 
 
 requires some sympathy with Bohemianism to recog- 
 nise genius in tatters. And there is very little of Bo- 
 hemianism to mitigate the dulness of our society. We 
 are too business-like and prosaic. And then, as re- 
 gards social intercourse with Natives, let us honestly 
 confess that the greatest barrier of all is our pride. 
 John Bull on the continent of Europe turns up his 
 nose at everything he sees ; how much more in the 
 East ! John Bull with all his virtues and his vices — his 
 probity, his energy, his self-reliance and his patriot- 
 ism ; his want of idealism, his inadaptability, his 
 contempt of everything he doesn't understand, his 
 social snobbishness — has put his foot down in India, 
 and is proudly conscious of attracting the awe- 
 struck and, he would fain believe, admiring gaze of 
 two hundred and fifty swarthy millions. John Bull 
 finds on landing at Bombay that his influence and 
 his empire depend to a large extent on prestige, and 
 he naturally wishes to live up to it, and having rather 
 vague ideas as to what the prestige depends on, thinks 
 the safest way is to show he has a full appreciation 
 of his claims to it. Let us not blame him too much. 
 It is a failing common among those who are born 
 to rule. Dr. Fryer, an old traveller to India 200 
 years ago, says of our predecessors : — " The Moormen 
 domineer over the Indians most insufferably." In 
 Hyderabad John's pride as a ruler is not so excessive, 
 and he doesn't feel he has that terrible prestige to 
 support, so he treats the Oriental more as he would 
 if he met him " at home." Nobody complains of 
 John at home. Every Native who returns from 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 17 
 
 England comes with the tale that the English in 
 England and the English in India belong to two 
 different species. This is not true. No one who 
 has not experienced them can fully realize the difficul- 
 ties which an Englishman finds who attempts social 
 intercourse with the people. Still the effort should 
 be made ; and, if persevered in, it will repay itself; 
 while it would remove a danger to our Empire which 
 many people think will ultimately prove fatal to it — 
 the resentment of all influential Natives at the 
 supercilious treatment of the English — a cause of 
 discontent which lies at the bottom of most of the 
 political dissatisfaction for which higher education 
 is held responsible. 
 
 The second reason why social intercourse be- 
 tween Englishmen and Natives has taken root at Hy- 
 derabad is that the Natives themselves, being 
 Musalmans of rank, are suited for social intercourse 
 with English gentlemen. In many places no 
 pleasant social intercourse could be established for 
 the simple reason that the elements, like oil and 
 water, could not be made to mix. It may be confi- 
 dently predicted that the military man and the 
 Bengali Babu will never be bosom friends. But 
 the British officer, who, by-the-bye, has a high 
 reputation among the Natives for his manners, recog- 
 nises a kindred spirit in a man like Afsar Jung, who 
 will look a tiger in the face as coolly as one might 
 oneself a cow, and who for polo and panther-spearing 
 has no superior in the Deccan. Looks also count 
 for something, though their effect is not always to 
 
iS ESSAYS ON 
 
 attract. When a young lady said to her puritani- 
 cal mother — "Oh, So-and-so,"alluding toone of His 
 Highness's officers, " has such beautiful eyes, 
 enough to drive any woman to distraction," the old 
 lady seriously thought of decamping with her family. 
 It is easier, too, for an Englishman to understand a 
 Musalman than to penetrate into the recesses of 
 the Hindu mind, though in very religious people 
 this similarity of faith sometimes acts as an incentive 
 to conflict. But there is not much religious bigotry 
 among the Mahomedan gentry of Hyderabad, and 
 as they are fond of horses, and a few of them like 
 books, and most of them like dinner parties, and 
 (shall we add) some of them like intrigue^n all 
 which matters the local English community can 
 furnish sympathisers — the elements clearly exist out 
 of which to construct social intercourse. One barrier 
 remains, though there are indications that that too 
 will in time disappear. This is the purdah system, 
 and, next to insular exclusiveness and prejudices 
 against eating together, it is the greatest hindrance 
 to social intercourse. When the ladies of Islam have 
 vindicated their position, then may free social 
 intercourse take place, and the Mahomedan com- 
 munity will realize that its own social life has hitherto 
 been deprived of half its grace and beauty. So 
 much for the social — let me now make a few 
 remarks on the political — condition of Hyder- 
 abad. 
 
 In attempting some description of the politics 
 of Hyderabad, it is not intended to discuss the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 19 
 
 abilities and influence of this secretary or that noble- 
 man, such and such a Maulvi or such and such a 
 Jung, as some journals that devote attention to 
 Hyderabad matters delight in doing. Our envious 
 pen shall not be uplifted against the happy mortal, 
 whoever he may be, around whose house cluster 
 the carriages of the great ; but an effort will be made 
 to describe the form of government of the first of 
 Native States, and compare it with other existing 
 forms. The Hyderabad Government is an Oriental 
 despotism, tempered and propped up by British in- 
 fluence. The necessity of the sustaining power of 
 the Imperial Government may be demonstrated 
 from the historic fact that in old days, when the heir 
 to an Indian monarchy was a man of weak character, 
 a civil war frequently ensued, resulting generally in 
 the establishment of a new dynasty. As the British 
 Government cannot tolerate civil wars in the coun- 
 try, the necessity of its occasional support of the 
 reigning prince is obvious. In discussing, however, 
 this form of Government, the influence of the Impe- 
 rial Government, and of its organ, the Resident, 
 will be ignored, as this is exerted according to gen- 
 eral fixed lines of policy, more or less understood 
 by every one, varied, of course, according to the 
 idiosyncrasies of the officer who, for the time being, 
 represents the Government. We shall assume there- 
 fore the Hyderabad State is an Oriental autocracy, as 
 if not a pure example of one it is sufficiehtly like one 
 to enable us to understand pretty well the method of 
 working of that form of government. And it is 
 
20 ESSAYS ON 
 
 proposed first of all to compare it with a modern 
 democracy, such as the government of England. 
 
 Among recent discoveries in the science of geo- 
 metry a method, known as the method of reciprocity, 
 has been invented, by which a theorem concerning 
 points and lines in a plane gives rise at once to a 
 corresponding theorem in which, while lines -remain 
 the same, instead of every point a plane is substitut- 
 ed, and for the plane, in which all the points and 
 lines of the first theorem lie, a point in space is 
 taken, through which all the lines and planes of the 
 second theorem must pass. By this method we 
 pass at once from one theorem to another of appa- 
 rently a wholly different character, and yet the two 
 are united in so subtle a manner that when the first 
 is proved the latter also is bound by the sternest 
 laws of thought to be true. A relationship of a 
 somewhat similar character exists between an East- 
 ern autocracy and a Western democracy. The lines 
 which remain the same in both are the politicians, 
 but instead of the point representing the king, we 
 have the plane standing for the people. And at will 
 be found that when a proposition about the one is 
 announced, a second proposition will generally arise 
 referring to the other, although it may appear in 
 very different guise. And so, although the Hyder- 
 abad Government presents a much greater superficial 
 analogy with the Government of India than it does 
 with that of" England, yet, to snatch the heart out of 
 it and show its secret spirit, it will be better to com- 
 pare it with the English rather than the Indian type. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 21 
 
 Let us then institute this comparison. The 
 main object of politicians in both Governments is 
 the same, namely, office and the power it brings. 
 The first step towards attaining this is, in the auto- 
 cracy, by pleasing the monarch : in the democracy, 
 by pleasing the people. The character of the 
 monarch and of the people respectively are objects 
 of profound study by those politicians who would 
 be successful. It would be impossible to enumerate 
 the methods adopted for acquiring influence with 
 king or people, but perhaps the most successful one — 
 the one that wears best, is most often useful and 
 most reliable — is flattery. The greatness, the beauty, 
 the ability, the strength of the king, are they not 
 the well-known themes of courtiers ? And as for the 
 generosity of the people, the nobility of the people 
 and (who but a politician could have invented so 
 glaring a paradox ?) the wisdom of the people, we 
 hear these themes repeated ad nauseam on every 
 political platform in England, Without any attempt 
 at proof of so outrageous an assumption, it is said 
 that men who are admittedly steeped in ignorance 
 will collectively deliver decisions of the greatest 
 value of the most intricate questions which not one 
 in ten thousand of them understand. Your orator 
 stands up and tells them so to their faces, denounc- 
 ing as traitors all who dare to deny it. Is not this 
 flattery as gross as was ever offered to a monarch ? 
 But the ringing cheers of the crowd, conrring as sweet 
 incense to the soul of the orator, shew that the 
 honeyed words have had the desired effect. As to 
 
22 ESSAYS ON 
 
 the other means of pleasing, the gift of pleasant con- 
 versation is very valuable in a courtier, while for the 
 democrat witty tales, especially if he has the knack 
 of telling them well, are his most valuable stock in 
 ti-ade, and worth far more than profound political 
 reflections. A judicious exciting of the fighting 
 instinct may in both cases prove beneficial to the 
 politician. An appeal to avarice is perhaps more 
 useful in the democracy, for most kings have already 
 got their " three acres and a cow ; " while the king is 
 more susceptible in other ways ; for example, we 
 never yet heard of a mob being in love. And, lest in 
 all this something should startle a sensitive con- 
 science, a doctrine is at hand in both cases as a salve. 
 For the one, does not loyalty to his master justify 
 everything, and for the other, is not vox poppli vox dei? 
 The first step having been gained, namely, the satis- 
 faction of monarch or mob, what next ? Now is 
 the opportunity for blackening the character of the 
 man into whose shoes you wish to step. In the 
 autocracy that is known as intrigue, and will be 
 talked of at length further on. In the democracy 
 the members of the party out of power cast every 
 aspersion they can invent on the character of those 
 in power ; make charges of stupidity and want of 
 honesty which, from personal acquaintance, they 
 must know to be, if not false, grossly exaggerated ; 
 ignore the difficulties they have had to encounter, 
 and hold them up to the most unseemly ridicule. 
 Each system has its characteristic vices. In that 
 of intrigues, deceit and double dealing ; in that of 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 23 
 
 mob-oratory, cant and dishonesty of opinion. And in 
 both systems are to be found men who despise these 
 artifices, and who walk straight in the line shown 
 them by conscience regardless of the pitfalls into 
 which they may fall. Happy is the country that 
 possesses many such men, in whom patriotism and 
 principle outweigh self-interest. 
 
 And now for a few words on the subject of in- 
 trigue, its aims and its methods : that branch of 
 diplomacy in which the Englishman is a child be- 
 fore the Oriental, just as the latter would be in 
 Parliament before the trained Parliamentary tacti- 
 cian. In Hyderabad intrigue is elevated to the 
 rank of a fine art. " Surely those two men, who 
 are holding such long and amicable discourse as 
 they drive together, are hatching some scheme 
 of mutual advancement, " the ingenuous Briton 
 might think, little imagining that they were 
 deadly enemies who had dealt one another many a 
 good blow, and knew each was trying to cap the 
 last with a crusher. The general purpose of intri- 
 gue is to raise oneself and diminish the power of 
 those who are in any way one's rivals. In the 
 democratic system the animosity and abuse are open, 
 and men are often better friends than they seem to 
 be. The reverse is the case here. As evils atten- 
 dant on this system of intrigue we may mention the 
 following : — ^It encourages deceit and lying ; it 
 makes friendship rare ; it overburdens the minds of 
 individuals and of society with mean thoughts, like 
 the gaming table entrapping the best intellects, and 
 
24 ESSAYS ON 
 
 thus destroying free unconstrained social intercourse, 
 the growth of literature and" true patriotism ; and it 
 fosters jealousy and petty personal passions. For 
 those who appreciate the game it has no doubt its 
 attractions. They have no cause for complaint. 
 They give as good as they get and, if sensible men, 
 will take a beating as philosophipally as a chess-play- 
 er. They are not taken in by false appearances of 
 friendship, for they know the nature of the mask 
 they themselves wear ; and so they escape those 
 wounds to their aiifections, those disappointments 
 arising from the ingratitude and insincerity of those 
 whom they reckoned their friends, which are cruel 
 blows to more simple, truthful natures. They are 
 not deceived by those in whom they . put their trust, 
 because they are wise enough to be very cautious in 
 trusting anybody but themselves. On the other 
 hand, those who have other tastes in life ; who love 
 society, or letters, or art, and wish, after honourably 
 doing their duties, to have time to give to their 
 hobbies ; those who value friendship as the choicest 
 fruit in life ; or those who wish to reform their 
 society and help the national progress, and who 
 cannot afford the time to become successful in this 
 kind of diplomacy ; or who despise its methods 
 and its objects — such people find this political 
 system odious, and destructive of what they value 
 most. " We left our homes to get a decent liveli- 
 hood," they say, " and we must stay on that account. 
 But the place is not to our taste. Better a post of 
 half the value and a quiet life in British India." For 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 2 5 
 
 in the Government of British India, in spite of the 
 denunciations of the Native Press, there are certain 
 advantages that are not fully appreciated until their 
 absence is felt, and that enable the Government to 
 buy good ability cheaper than any of its competitors 
 in Native India. The first is the peaceful sense of 
 security attached to its posts'; and the second, 
 though in reality the result of this, a comparative 
 absence of intrigue. In fact, comparing the British 
 Indian bureaucracy with the Eastern despotism and 
 the English democracy, many considerations arise 
 pointing to its being the most perfect form of 
 government yet invented by man. The objection 
 which our nationalists regard as fatal, that it is 
 foreign, is beside the mark, for that is a necessity of 
 the case ; rather the argument that arises from the 
 extreme foreignness of the governors and their 
 ignorance of the people — an ignorance that, as far as 
 their inner life is concerned, is in most cases never 
 surmounted, points to the extreme perfection of the 
 machine that can battle with circumstances so ad- 
 verse, and at the same time get through its work at 
 a much greater rate, and accomplish much more 
 than the English democracy. This is the ideal 
 towards which the Hyderabad State should aspire ; 
 but to reach it, it is necessary to cut at the root 
 the system of intrigue by establishing firmly the 
 security of the State officials. How can this be 
 done ? We have first to discover the cause of 
 these intrigues which are not found in British India. 
 The most obvious answer is that one Government 
 
26 ESSAYS ON 
 
 is Native while the other is English. But there are 
 Englishmen in Hyderabad, — and we need not be 
 well versed in Hyderabad affairs to have ample - 
 proof that this explanation is quite untenable. In- 
 deed, we sometimes blow the trumpet of our nation- 
 al virtues a little too loud. The Imperial Govern- 
 ment, however, which cannot afford to have pre- 
 judices, makes no such assumption, and, rightly 
 considering the national prestige, exercises a very 
 wise supervision over the employment and advance- 
 ment of Europeans in Native States, for sometimes 
 proposals in these matters emanating from Native 
 Governments arise from other considerations than 
 those of administrative efficiency. One cause of 
 intrigue seems to be the existence of an uncertainty 
 at Head-Quarters : an arbitrary will that can raise 
 one and lower another at pleasure. As long as this 
 exists no real security can be felt. It is necessary 
 then that those who wield authority should be, in 
 the first place, strong ; and secondly, should be 
 willing to submit to restrictions on their own arbi- 
 trary power, so as to further the interests of their 
 country. And for the enforcement of this there is 
 needed an enlightened public opinion, recognising 
 that the only right criterion of official promotion is 
 the excellence of official work. 
 
 Leaving these very general considerations and 
 coming to the more special features of the present 
 condition of Hyderabad politics, undoubtedly the 
 most remarkable fact is the predominance of a 
 foreign element in the administration. Nearly all 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 27 
 
 posts of importance are held not by native Hyder- 
 abadis, but by Mahomedans imported from Upper 
 India. In a word, the Hindustanis in Hyderabad 
 are like the English in British India. The analogy 
 is very close. The reason for their presence is the 
 same, namely, that they can do the work better than 
 the native Hyderabadis. They were brought by 
 the late Sir Salar Jung, and without them he could 
 never have raised the administration to its present 
 efficiency. Remove them, and it would collapse. 
 They have mostly been trained in the British 
 administration, and have learnt English methods of 
 work. This fact is surely a hopeful one for the 
 future, and indicates that in British India the people 
 are making real progress. Again, the objections 
 raised against them are very similar to those raised 
 against the English. An agitation, and that, too, 
 led chiefly by foreigners, either sympathetic or dis- 
 appointed (how close the analogy runs!) has been 
 started with the cry " Hyderabad for the Hyder- 
 abadis." They say the Hindustanis are undermining 
 the State, though without them it would almost 
 cease to exist. They say they have come to drain 
 the resources of the country into their own pockets, 
 and that there are plenty of Hyderabadis fit to hold 
 the posts. Yet recently, when a Registrar of the 
 High Court had to be appointed, a search was made, 
 but in vain, for a suitable Hyderabadi, so a Punjabi 
 was appointed. It is very strange that these 
 Hindustani Mahomedans should be looked on 
 as foreigners, because all of us who have read 
 
28 ESSAYS ON 
 
 Mr. Cotton's book know that the peoi^le of India, 
 Hindus and Mahomedans, have recently become 
 one nation and feel as one man on every political 
 question ; and still more surprising when we reflect 
 that these Hindustani Mahomedans share with the 
 Hyderabadis the fervent faith of Islam and speak 
 the same language, and that it is not so very long 
 ago since the Nizam and his nobles came them- 
 selves from Hindustan. But whatever their de- 
 tractors may say, the Hindustani officials of Hy- 
 derabad are certainly a remarkable body of men : 
 perhaps the ablest group of Natives to be found in 
 India. To begin with : their manners and mode of 
 life are thoroughly civilized. They have among them 
 men of great practical as well as high literary ability. 
 Their experience of administration and heavy res- 
 ponsibility have sobered their views ; and they heartily 
 despise the impractical bosh that streams from the 
 pens of the' graduate journalists of the Native Press. 
 As for Parliaments for India, which is the latest in- 
 sane proposal that our radical agitators have favour- 
 ed us with, their knowledge of the aristocratic con- 
 stitution of Indian society and the actual political 
 forces to be dealt with, makes them regard the pro- 
 posal with contempt. They have not even given 
 their capital the inestimable blessings of elective self- 
 government. Nor do they grudge the Imperial 
 Government its summer trip to the hills, for they 
 know that the best wealth of a country is the brain 
 power of its statesmen, and that the country's best 
 interests are served by maintaining that at the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 29 
 
 highest possible level. Again, the evidence given 
 by the Hyderabad officials before the Public Ser- 
 vice Commission was perhaps the most valuable re- 
 ceived, their proposals being practical and moderate 
 instead of doctrinaire and revolutionary. Among 
 no body of men in India have the English better 
 sympathisers than among these Hindustani officials, 
 for their position is so similar to that of the Eng- 
 lish that they understand the difficulties of the 
 situation of a governing class, while they have had 
 that practical experience without which it is impossi- 
 ble to form sound political opinions; Their exist- 
 ence indicates the probability of the Native States 
 proving themselves of great use to the British rule, 
 by the formation in them of a conservative native 
 public opinion to counteract the go-ahead radicalism 
 of the Presidency Towns and the scribes of journal- 
 ism. 
 
 In connection with the questions now at issue 
 before the Public Service Commission, a lesson may 
 be learnt from the way in which the great Hyder- 
 abad statesman grappled with the same problem. Sir 
 Salar Jiing chose men who united the qualification 
 of having proved their ability in minor positions in 
 British India with that of their being gentle- 
 men. In consequence, with their greater wealth, 
 their style of living has advanced to meet the 
 requirements of their position. Unlike a certain 
 native British official who, though drawing a salary 
 of three or four hundred rupees, lived on fifteen 
 rupees a month and employed his wife as his groom, 
 
30 ESSAYS ON 
 
 their mode of life is such as to put them on terms 
 of social equality with the noblemen of the country 
 they have to govern. They form, too, a society 
 which, like Anglo-Indian society, has the advantage 
 of homogeneity and cohesiveness. 
 
 We care nothing for these things, With a 
 glorious radicalism, which we are far from exercis- 
 ing in our own country, we elevate the commonest 
 man who has crammed himself through an examina- 
 tion — a fetish we blame the Natives for worshipping, 
 but who worships it more than Government ? — and 
 are sublimely indifferent as to whether he has those 
 social and other qualities which will enable him to 
 command the respect of the territorial magnates 
 whom we call on him to rule, and who are the real 
 leaders of the people.. Perhaps if we realised better 
 the social discontent our levelling ideas create in 
 Eastern society, we should hesitate before applying 
 to India the latest notions of the European political 
 workshop. 
 
 Before concluding this sketch of Hyderabad 
 politics, a few lines may be given to the present 
 condition of affairs in the State. Since the great 
 man passed away there have been many turns and 
 changes in Hyderabad affairs. First, an old Hindu, 
 whose grandfather had been Prime Minister, tried 
 his hand and failed. Then the young Sir Salar 
 Jung was appointed in the hope that he would 
 emulate his father. His government, by reason 
 of the support it received from the Hindustani 
 officials, got on very well until serious differences 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 31 
 
 arose between the king and his minister, which 
 ended in the latter's resignation. Now, indeed, 
 had it not been for a new factor that had appeared 
 on the scene, a state of terrible confusion might 
 have ensued. As in America, and to a certain 
 extent in England, the custom has been for the 
 officials to change with the chief ; and onthe pro- 
 scribed list here would have been the very men who 
 are most essential to the working of the administra- 
 tive machine. The new factoY that had appeared 
 was an English Private Secretary of His Highness — 
 an event which might have proved of doubtful 
 benefit. But the man chosen for this post happen- 
 ed, whether due to the wisdom of Lord Dufferin 
 or the good iqbal of the Hyderabad State, to be one 
 who, by his tact and personal qualities, disarmed the 
 suspicion with which his appointment was regarded ; 
 one of those with whose countrymen humanity at 
 large disputes its claim to their sympathies ; and 
 who, mixing among the people with that fine free- 
 dom from insular conventionality which the great 
 Anglo-Indians of the past exhibited, succeeded in 
 inspiring in his royal master a confidence which 
 guaranteed to the State servants that security of 
 which they stood in need. At the same time His 
 Highness won from all a reputation for good sense 
 by choosing from among the nobles a minister well- 
 known for his honourable and upright character. 
 So, as regards the immediate future, the prognosis 
 of the Hyderabad State may be pronounced favour- 
 able, though with a patient ,of a constitution so 
 
32 ESSAYS ON 
 
 delicate, those who have its welfare at heart can 
 never afford to relax their care and vigilance. As to 
 the distant future, one consideration should be 
 ever present to the servants and the subjects of His 
 Highness the Nizam. The forces which brought 
 the Moghul Empire to grief, and its offshoots 
 in Bengal and Oudh, and those which operate to 
 reduce the Mahomedan community in all parts of 
 India to poverty, will act in the Hyderabad State 
 also, unless counteracted by a new vitalising energy. 
 Although -there is no fear that the independent 
 royalty of the Nizam will ever be touched by the 
 British Government, yet, by the progress of the 
 classes who fortify themselv'es with the weapons of 
 Western thought and the insidious advance of the 
 money-lender, the Mahomedan nobility will one day, 
 unless they wake up to a sense of their danger, find 
 themselves in the pitiable condition of their brethren 
 of Upper India, when almost too late they are dis- 
 covering their mistake. Let them reform their zenana 
 system and return to a stricter adherence of the 
 precept forbidding strong drink. Let all recognise 
 that in education alone lies the future greatness of 
 their country. Happily there is evidence that the 
 Mahomedans of Hyderabad are awakening to a 
 sense that they must move with the times. If they 
 realise this fully, and bestir themselves with the 
 energy that characterised them of old, there is every 
 reason to hope that this living relic of the Moghul 
 times may become the most sparkling facet of " the 
 brightest jewel of the Imperial Crown." 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 33 
 
 VANDALISM AT BIJAPUR. 
 
 The Bombay Presidency used to boast of 
 possessing one of the grandest ruined cities in 
 the world. Bijapur was in old times as large as 
 Paris is now, and it contained more works of 
 architectural art than modern Paris. It has a dome 
 larger than that of the Pantheon at Rome. It has 
 one of the finest mosques in India ; and there are 
 ruins innumerable, some of them of superb beauty, 
 within the six miles of its walls. In grandeur of 
 desolation it can rival Fatehpur-Sikri. Add to this 
 that the art of Bijapur is unique. It represents 
 a style of its own, a particularly beautiful rich 
 variety of Indo-Saracenic that grew up of its own 
 accord in the Deccan. All this indicate the priceless 
 value of Bijapur in the history of architecture. 
 
 For two hundred years the buildings of Bijapur 
 had resisted with fair success the ravages of time, 
 and the worse ravages of destroying monarchs and 
 barbarous hordes ; but a more terrible infliction was 
 in store for it. In 1879 it became the chief town of 
 a British district ; an English colony took up its 
 residence in the citadel, where the finest group of 
 ruins existed, and the old buildings are disappearing 
 more rapidly and more effectually than they did 
 under the hands of any previous barbarians. The 
 old destroyers — time and the besieging kings — left 
 marks on the buildings that added to their interest ; 
 but the vandals who are now making hay of them 
 
34 ESSAYS ON 
 
 have thought only of .utilising the masonry. They 
 have built them into bungalows and kucherries ; it 
 is impossible to say what is old and what is new ; 
 the glorious art of the old architects is overlaid by 
 the tasteless alterations of the modern engineer • 
 and the whole has acquired an air of vulgarity that 
 completely mars its beauty. The historic value is 
 gone ; but what is that ? The British Government 
 has saved some hundreds of rupees a month. Why 
 does it not pull down the Taj, and sell the marble? 
 Something useful might be done with the money. 
 It is difficult to write patiently of the havoc that is 
 at this moment being perpetrated. , One visits the 
 citadel. " What is that place ?" " Oh, that," says 
 one's guide, "was such-and-such a palace. Now 
 that it has been, made durust,* it is the Collector's or 
 Judge's kuchefry." Clink, clink, go the chisels of 
 the masons, for though a large amount of damage 
 has already been done, more remains. Surely there 
 are in British India some traces of a public that 
 loves art, that respects antiquity, and that will call 
 out for the immediate stoppage of this disgraceful 
 affair, and the restoration of everything that is not 
 irremediably ruined to its ancient condition. 
 
 The first shock to his artistic susceptibilities 
 that the visitor to Bijapur receives is to find the fine 
 mosque attached to the wonderful tomb of Sultan 
 Mahomed fitted up as a dak bungalow, partitions 
 being built up between the arches to make separate 
 rooms, and the whole whitewashed. Wherever 
 
 * Correct, 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 35 
 
 nothing else in the way of improvement occurred to 
 the exuberant imagination of the engineers who 
 have been rebuilding Bijapur, they whitewashed 
 the old places. So you will find the lovely little 
 Mecca Musjid, built in stone, whitewashed ; and 
 the great mosque attached to the tomb of Ibrahim — 
 a magnificent building unsurpassed by any of the 
 buildings of Delhi for elaborateness of beautiful 
 detail — you will find this mosque completely white- 
 washed inside, and painted here and there with 
 blue lines. And as to the Post Office, the playful 
 fancy of our re-adapters of the masterpieces of the 
 past to the material needs of the present has dis- 
 played itself here in all its graceful delicacy. The 
 Post Office is, or rather was, a jewel of a mosque 
 possessing all the peculiarities of the Bijapur mosque 
 — the single dome, the strikingly graceful minarets, 
 and the thick, heavy corbelled cornice. Now its beau- 
 tiful archways are built up, and grilled iron windows 
 inserted, a horrid tin sloping roof is stuck on to its 
 front like' the peak of an English schoolboy's cap, 
 to serve as a roof for a verandah. The sacred build- 
 ing is full of clerks and covered with notice-boards, 
 and the most sacred place of all, the niche pointing 
 towards Mecca, has been fitted up with shelves for 
 books and lamps and bottles. Add to this that the 
 lower part of the beautiful stone building is painted 
 a coarse red, and the upper part white, and a faint 
 notion may be formed of the degradation to which 
 this gem of ancient art, the like of which for beauty 
 and true artistic feeling all the engineers of the 
 
36 ESSAYS ON 
 
 Public Works Department put together could not pro- 
 duce, has been subjected. But what matter? Proba- 
 bly the British Government saves thirty or at least 
 twenty rupees a month. If twenty such heirlooms of 
 the past be so utilised, the Government will save as 
 much as the salary of a District Engineer. But, 
 speak, oh, India! Wouldst thou rather have those 
 beautiful monuments of art, those triumphs of human 
 genius, those leaves in the book of the world's 
 architecture, those living relics of a grand ancient 
 dynasty, or the District Engineer? We complain 
 of the Mahomedans for turning old Hindu temples 
 into mosques. We cap them, we turn mosques 
 into Post Offices. The Mahomedans pressed the 
 old temples into the service of a purer religion 
 and a higher form of art. In transforming they 
 beautified — witness Ajmere and old Delhi In trans- 
 forming, we vulgarise. The glories of the Post 
 Office, into which this ancient consecrated shrine of 
 monotheism, where those who are gone have bowed 
 their heads in prayer and praise to God, has been 
 transfigured, must be symbolized in a befitting way ; 
 and the tin verandah roof will, if it lasts, stand as a 
 monument of the prostitution of art to sordid utility. 
 If one ascends one of the higher ruins and looks 
 over the ancient city with its domes and minarets, 
 and asks what the different places are, the same reply 
 is given by the obsequious guide: — "That was a 
 mosque : now it is a bungalow," he says of a building 
 that has lost all shape and comeliness in the transfor- 
 mation. " That," says he of a large building in the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 37 
 
 distance, " is the pucca jail." " And that," pointing to 
 
 a large dome, "is Sahib's residence; and that 
 
 was the Eidgah of Aurangzeb, now it is the police 
 lines." 
 
 There is another aspect in which this business 
 may be regarded. It is the taking of public property, 
 or at least of what in every civilized Government 
 should be regarded as public property, and devoting 
 it to private purposes. The public is shut out from 
 their ancient palaces and tombs ; they are private 
 residences, and are shut off from the road by gates. 
 
 I have only described a small portion of the 
 wholesale vandalism that is being carried out. I 
 might mention how a lovely old gateway is being 
 built up and transformed into a church. The 
 masons have been hard at work, and the painters 
 are now daubing it with atrocious colours. But I 
 will spare further details. The close examination of 
 the alterations, the renovations, the brutal re-adapt- 
 ations that are being carried out in this glorious old 
 city — this ancient Rome of the Mahomedans of the 
 Deccan — must fill the soul of an Englishman who has 
 any reverence for the past, or appreciation of art, 
 with feelings of indignation, humiliation, and degrada- 
 tion. " Do I belong, then," he will ask," to a nation 
 of barbarians ? Has Ruskin's teaching fallen dead on 
 the ears of my countrymen ? Have the English in 
 India no recollection of the abbeys and castles that 
 are affectionately tended by the English at home?" 
 Upper India has had its period of vandalism, 
 but that was before Mr. Fergusson described the 
 
38 ESSAYS ON 
 
 treasures of Indian art. And now the traveller who 
 visits Agra and Delhi feels with pride that no Maho- 
 medan Government could guard more tenderly the 
 ancient monuments of Moghul art than the British 
 Government does. A tablet in the wall describes how 
 to Sir John Strachey India owes the preservation of 
 these buildings. Bombay boasts of being an 
 advanced Province ; but unless Bombay bestirs itself 
 very soon, it will be able to boast of having com- 
 mitted the most thorough-going work of artistic 
 devastation that the melancholy historian of the future 
 will have to chronicle, and this at a time when public 
 opinion was supposed to be enlightened. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 39 
 
 NEW INDIA. 
 
 This is the title of a book written by Mr. H. 
 S. Cotton, a member of the Bengal Civil Service, 
 professing to describe the change that has come 
 over the inner life of the people of India during the 
 last generation, and to dictate political measures 
 necessary for ensuring the proper progress of 
 the country. As the book represents a certain 
 school of thought rather than the opinions of a par-, 
 ticular thinker, it deserves a closer attention than 
 might otherwise be accorded it. The political ideas 
 it expresses are very widely held by the English- 
 speaking Indians of the Presidency Towns. They 
 are professed also by a certain number of English 
 Writers : some, men who have made a long residence 
 in the country ; some, who have honoured it with 
 but a flying visit ; and some, who have never seen 
 its shores. The colouring they receive varies accord- 
 ing to the experience and idiosyncracies of the 
 author. In a book called India for the Indians 
 and for England by Mr. W. Digby, the title of 
 which the author appears to think enunciates a new 
 principle, we find them in luxuriant inconsistency 
 and but thinly diluted with experience and common 
 sense. Another exponent, Mr. Slagg, M. P., per- 
 ceived in the "National Conference" held last year at 
 Bombay the handwriting on the wall in Belshazzar's 
 palace, and hastened to make known his alarming 
 discovery. In Mr. Wilfred Blunt we find some of 
 
40 ESSAYS ON 
 
 the same ideas, this time with a strong flavour of the 
 poet and breathing a fervent admiration for Islam ; 
 vfcile in Mr. Cotton they take a Hindu colouring, 
 and are tempered by the conservatism of the Posi- 
 tivist and by twenty years' experience of the country. 
 As they are well presented, and may be taken as 
 thoroughly matured, a criticism on his book offers 
 a convenient opportunity for discussing opinions 
 which belong rather to a party than to a particular 
 man. The book in question undertakes to describe 
 the state of modern India and to propose drastic 
 political reforms. Having chosen so ambitious a 
 task, it must be judged by its success or failure in 
 accomplishing it. As it seems to the writer of this 
 review that the present condition of India is wrongly 
 diagnosed and the proposed measures of reform 
 would, if carried out, bring nothing but confusion and 
 disaster, he is obliged to condemn the book, much 
 as he may admire certain passages, and grateful as he 
 may be for the cordial and rare friendship displayed 
 by the author towards the people of India. The des- 
 cription, for example, on pp. 143 — 152, of the contrast 
 presented to the mind of the young Hindu by the 
 idol-worship at home and the ideas instilled in the 
 English college, is very picturesque and graphic, 
 Mr. Cotton's speculations on the future of Hindu 
 thought are full of interest. If the book had been 
 called New Calcutta instead of New India, and 
 had restricted itself to describing that section of 
 the population which the author apparently knows 
 best, it might have been pronounced a valuable 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 41 
 
 contribution towards our knowledge of modern 
 India. But as it professes to be a manual of 
 instruction for the British public in political matters 
 applying to the whole of India, it cannot be dealt 
 with thus leniently. 
 
 The first obvious mistake in the book is a very 
 common one — an exaggerated importance attached 
 to Calcutta — a belief that Calcutta sways the rest of 
 India, and hence a flattering assumption that by stu- 
 dying Calcutta we may read the minds of the people 
 of other parts of India. Mr. Cotton writes : — " The 
 public opinion is moulded in the Metropolis, and 
 takes its tone almost entirely from the educated com- 
 munity which centres in the chief towns. No one 
 can pretend to possess any knowledge of native feel- 
 ing who does not keep his finger on the pulse of public 
 opinion in the Presidency Towns. The people of 
 India cannot but act and think as that section of the 
 community which monopolises the knowledge of 
 politics and administration, may instruct them. The 
 educated classes are the voice and brain of the country 
 The Bengali Babu now rules public opinion from 
 Peshaw;ar to Chittagong." It may be concluded from 
 these remarks that Mr. Cotton is not well acquainted 
 with Upper India or with the Mahomedan community 
 of any part of the continent. To begin with, it is a 
 very erroneous assumption to suppose that the only 
 educated people in India are the people who have 
 learnt English. This is certainly most untrue of the 
 Mahomedan community, for learning has been the 
 heritage of Islam for ages ; and although Mahomedan 
 
42 ESSAYS ON 
 
 civilization has fallen much into decay, there are still 
 to be found in India thousands of men well versed in 
 the literature of Persia and Arabia, who would be 
 recognised in any society as educated and cultivated 
 men. It is a mistake to suppose that these men 
 have no knowledge of politics and administration, 
 that they never thi>nk about these subjects, and 
 that they exert no influence on their countrymen. 
 On the contrary, in logical thought and sound 
 sense, their opinions often contrast very favourably 
 with the utterances of those who are the apostles 
 of the new school. Being the descendants of 
 men who have governed a mighty empire, they 
 have very distinct traditions as to the best principles 
 of government, and the best means of captivating the 
 affections of an Oriental people ; and they criticize 
 English measures from a very different point of view 
 from that of Young Bengal. They have been largely 
 utilised by the British Government in the adminis- 
 tration of Upper India, and many of them hold im- 
 portant positions in the Native States. Their poli- 
 tical thought resembles the old Tory school of 
 England far more than the Radical, and they are 
 by no means so enthusiastic for democratic measures 
 as is commonly supposed by Englishmen. For ex- 
 ample, most of them dislike the freedom of the Press, 
 and think that it is calculated to fan the numerous 
 race animosities of which India is a hot bed. On 
 the other hand, they have their own grievances 
 which find inadequate public utterance. Their 
 first demand is for sympathy from their rulers, and 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 43 
 
 that they should not be looked upon as an inferior 
 race. They would prefer the Army to the Civil 
 Service, and they feel it as a stain on the national 
 honour that none of them are allowed high rank in 
 that, to them the most honourable, profession. But 
 in thought and feeling they are eminently con- 
 servative. And they are the real leaders of their 
 communities, and command their hearts and their 
 swords. 
 
 In estimating the political situation in India, it 
 should be remembered that questions of Indian 
 politics affect more nearly the fundamental basis of 
 society than questions of English politics ; and the first 
 essential for a sound appreciation of them is to keep 
 clearly before the mind the great physical forces 
 which lie quiescent under the calm surface of Indian 
 life, and which are the most important, and in the 
 event of a disturbance, would be the only important 
 factors to be reckoned with. Now the control of 
 these latent forces is not, as far at least as the Bengal 
 Presidency is concerned, vested in Calcutta. If the 
 English left the country, the Mahomedans, Sikhs, 
 Rajputs, and Jats would choose as their leaders men 
 whose existence Mr. Cotton ignores in his book, and 
 these people might begin to make things very un- 
 pleasant for the disciples of the new school of thought. 
 To overlook this is to overlook one of the most essen- 
 tial facts of the political situation in India ; in New 
 India we may say, if by "New India" we mean not 
 the visionary India of the future, but the actual India 
 of to-day, the India we see about us with our eyes — 
 
44. ESSAYS ON 
 
 sweet and beautiful, full of attractive sights and of 
 quaint old customs, and the home at once of two great 
 Oriental civilizations, Islam and Hinduism inex- 
 tricably mixed. But the term " New India" has an 
 ambiguity which, unless noticed, is fruitful of error. 
 For it may mean those political and social forces 
 which owe their existence to English influence, and 
 which at present form so small a proportion of the 
 whole ; or it may mean the India of to-day: and it is 
 very easy by starting an argument in which the first 
 premise pre-supposes the former meaning, and the 
 conclusion the latter, to arrive at very fallacious, 
 though often neat and pleasing, results. 
 
 The next subject I would deal with is the 
 thesis of chapter I, that a common Indian nation- 
 ality is showing itself all over India. English educa- 
 tion, as the author points out, tends to bring the 
 different peoples of India nearer together by giving 
 them a common language and a comman culture. 
 That this is a cause which ought in time to produce 
 some assimilation of the different peoples of India, 
 few will deny. But when he says that an actual 
 spirit of common nationality is fast growing up, he 
 is, it seems to me, going far ahead of the facts, and 
 will certainly give English readers a wrong impres- 
 sion. The facts adduced to shew the existence of 
 this sentiment are the common feeling among the 
 peoples of India on the Ilbert Bill, raised by Anglo- 
 Indian opf)osition, the ovation given to Lord 
 Ripon, the protestations of loyalty at the time of the 
 Russian crisis, and last of all, the mourning stated to 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 45 
 
 have been general on the death of Keshub Chunder 
 Sen. With regard to the last fact, he makes the 
 following remarkable assertion : — " The natives of all 
 parts of India, whatever their religion may have 
 been, united with one voice in the expression of 
 sorrow at his loss, and pride in him as a member 
 of one common nation." So far was this from 
 being the case that many well cultivated and very 
 influential men of Upper India do not even know 
 his name. What ignorance ! People may exclaim 
 to whom the name of the leader of the Brahmo 
 Somaj is familiar. But the ignorance is no greater 
 probably than that of the learned Brahmo's country- 
 men of, let us say. Shah Abdul Aziz, the " Sun of 
 India." These facts must strike one with surprise 
 until one realises that not less than the physical 
 difference between the burning plains of Mecca and 
 the snowy heights of the Himalaya is the difference 
 in thought and feeling between the Mahomedan 
 and Hindu worlds. But we must leave this tempt- 
 ing subject and return to the book. The proposition 
 of chapter I is thus stated : — " There now exists 
 in all Provinces of India a national movement 
 which is destined to develop and increase until it 
 receives its fulfilment in the systematic regeneration 
 of the whole country." And again : — " This growth 
 of a national spirit marks the revolution which 
 India has been subjected to in its political aspect." 
 When a movement is dignified with the name of 
 revolution, it is generally understood to have reached 
 a considerable magnitude. It is not necessary, 
 
46 E96AYS ON 
 
 however, for us to bring forward facts to disprove 
 this statement, for we have only to refer to another 
 part of the book for a complete refutation of it. 
 In chapter VII we find our author saying, "it is im- 
 possible to be blind to the general relation between 
 Hindus and Mahomedans ; to the jealousy which 
 exists and manifests itself so frequently, even under 
 British rule, in local outbursts of popular fanaticism ; 
 to the inherent antipathy with which every devout 
 follower of Islam cannot but regard the idola- 
 trous worshippers of Kali and Krishna. There 
 are good reasons, therefore, for saying, as has been 
 said, that the leaders of either community would 
 find it insupportable to live under the domination 
 of the other. Certainly ; for we do not think that 
 any amalgamation is probable, or that it would be 
 possible to find from either community a common 
 head with equal sympathies for both." And fur- 
 ther, "it is only in the distant future that we can 
 venture to predict a time when the fundamental 
 differences between them shall subside under the im- 
 pulse of a common f^ith." This is all very true; but 
 how about the common nationality which is regene- 
 rating the country, and which has already made a 
 revolution in Indian politics? The divergence be- 
 tween Hindus and Mahomedans is the crucial difficul- 
 ty in the formation of this nationality, and though the 
 Hindus outnumber the Mahomedans, the latter 
 showed themselves for six centuries not inferior in 
 physical force. Our author says, in chapter I, that a 
 spirit of common nationality has made such progress 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 47 
 
 that it is necessary to commence the work of political 
 reorganization on this basis, and in chapter VII, 
 that no union is possible until Hindus and Maho- 
 medans profess one common religion. That religion, 
 he indicates in the last chapter of his book, is to be 
 Positivism ; but considering the tenacity of Hindu- 
 ism and the shocks it has survived during the last 
 three thousand years ; bearing in mind also the 
 fervour of Islam ; and that in Europe the reli- 
 gion of Christ manages to hold its own against the 
 religion of Auguste Comte ; the day of the universal 
 adoption of Positivism, and therefore of fusion into 
 a common nationality, seems far distant enough to 
 allow at any rate the present generation of Anglo- 
 Indian statesmen to leave it out of account in their 
 policy. The only way of reconciling the conflicting 
 statements of chapters I and VII is by supposing 
 that the author considers the Mahomedan community 
 not worth taking into account in considering the 
 politics of India, But if this be his opinion, I 
 venture to think that practical statesmen will take 
 a different view. 
 
 In connection with this idea of a common Indian 
 nationality, some interesting questions arise. In 
 the first place, is it desirable ? This is very often 
 assumed, but it requires some proof, for nobody 
 wants to make Europe one nation. Then suppose 
 it be desirable and highly desirable, so that it is an 
 object worth working for, what are the necessary con- 
 ditions of accomplishing it? It is quite clear that if 
 there is to be a real approximation, every community 
 
48 ESSAYS ON 
 
 in India must be prepared to sacrifice some cherished 
 customs. Are people prepared to make the necessary- 
 sacrifices ? We believe not one man in ten thousand 
 is, and among the ten thousand must be reckoned Mr, 
 Cotton. For what is a nation .'' The word nation 
 implies that the people who compose it have some 
 marked points of resemblance which differentiate 
 them from other people. In a nation like England 
 we find a body of men united by race, country, 
 government, religion, language, manners and cus- 
 toms, and culture. In Europe it is considered es- 
 sential that the people to be of one nation should be 
 of one race, but in India we are obliged to make an 
 exception to this in the case of the Mahomedans, 
 who, if not a nation in the strictest sense of the 
 term, are united by a feeling very like national feeling, 
 and derived from the religious and social bond. 
 Therefore to produce a nation in India of the Euro- 
 pean type, it would be necessary that for some gener- 
 ations there should be free intermarriage between all 
 communities, a proposal which in the East would 
 stagger the boldest man ; while a nation of the Ma- 
 homedan type would require community of religion, 
 manners and customs, and culture. In either case 
 the people of India must be made really to resemble 
 one another; and, to begin with, the Hindus must give 
 up their caste system, which is indeed a barrier to a 
 thorough-going national feeling in their own body. 
 But Mr, Cotton, true to his Positivist instincts, is not 
 prepared to give up caste, and urges* the English- 
 speaking Hindus not to abandon it. " That system," 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 49 
 
 he says, "has its defects undoubtedly, but they are 
 defects more than counterbalanced by the services 
 it renders. Those reformers who are in the habit of 
 describing caste as the root of all evils in Hindu so- 
 ciety, overlook the impossibilityof uprooting an insti- 
 tution which has taken such a firm hold on the po- 
 pular mind. They forget that the attempt to 
 abolish caste, if successful, would be attended 
 with the most disastrous consequences, unless some 
 powerful religious influence were brought to bear 
 on the people in its place. They forget also that 
 caste is still stronger as a social than as a 
 religious institution, and that many a man who has 
 entirely lost, belief in his religion is zealous and 
 tenacious of his position as a high-caste man, 
 and scrupulously performs all customary rites and 
 ceremonies. Caste is now the framework which 
 knits together Hindu society ; it is the link which 
 maintains the existing religious system of Hinduism 
 in its present order. The problem of the future 
 is not to destroy caste, but to modify it, to 
 preserve its distinctive conceptions, and to gradually 
 place the'm upon a social instead of a supernatural 
 basis," This ideal is quite inconsistent with the 
 ideal of a common nationality. For one of the 
 "distinctive conceptions" of caste is that outsiders 
 cannot be admitted, but must remain outside the 
 pale. Another "distinctive conception," that in 
 a religious sense the merit of men depends on their 
 birth, is repulsive to Mahomedanism with its strong 
 view of religious democracy. "We are all slaves 
 
50 ESSAYS ON 
 
 before God," say the Muslims, and in the house of 
 prayer social distinctions are ignored in a way they 
 are not in Christian churches. For many reasons 
 it is clear that the, existence of the caste system, 
 with its rigid prohibitions against dining together 
 and intermarriage, is incompatible with the real 
 fusion of the different peoples of India into 
 one. 
 
 Let me now leave Mr. Cotton's description 
 of India as it is and pass on to his proposals for re- 
 form. He has a whole chapterful of reforms into 
 which I do not propose to follow him, as each of 
 his proposals would take long to criticise, and 
 many would require the qualifications of a specialist 
 to form any sound judgment on. He has a long list 
 of grievances against the British Government, which 
 all tend to shew how extremely foolish or perverse 
 all the great builders-up of the British Indian 
 Empire have been. Certainly no one who 
 formed his opinions from Mr. Cotton's book would 
 gain the faintest idea of the magnificent work that has 
 been accomplished by the English in India. It isquite 
 clear also that if Mr. Cotton's ideas had dominated 
 the policy of the Indian Government, the revolution 
 he takes so much delight in would never have occur- 
 red. For he deprecates railways, which are one of 
 the chief means of binding the different parts of 
 India together. He even finds fault with Govern- 
 ment for their educational policy, which, he says, 
 has produced " an anarchy which it is powerless to 
 remedy." But without it how could the Government 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. SI 
 
 have fostered the spread of the Western ideas which, 
 " notwithstanding drawbacks of all and whatever 
 kind, has proved of inestimable advantage to the 
 country ?" Mr. Cotton's testimony to the benefi- 
 cial results of the spread of Western ideas is valuable 
 because, as his book shews, he is well qualified to 
 speak of its effects on the Hindus of Calcutta. In 
 chapter IV Government comes in for violent abuse 
 for its land-legislation, or rather not the Government 
 — I beg Mr. Cotton's pardon — but " a party of 
 foreign occupiers who choose to call themselves the 
 State." Our author is also horrified at the thought 
 that this party of foreign occupiers keeps a very 
 large army, and appears to entertain ideas of fighting 
 Russia if she come too near them — certainly a most 
 unwarrantable thing for any party of men, foreign 
 occupiers or not, to do, who are not a State, which 
 Mr. Cotton seems to think they are not, though he 
 is so obliging as frequently to apply the term to them. 
 Then we meet with some good old stock-grievances, 
 such as the excessive difficulties' placed in the way 
 of Natives of India entering the Civil Service. And 
 finally, some wild proposals, such as one which is 
 having a run now in "Young India" — to govern the 
 country by Elective Legislative Councils, — proposals 
 which are certainly subject to many grave and ap- 
 parently insuperable objections that are not touched 
 on. 
 
 But it is more interesting to leave these numer- 
 ous and very questionable reforms, and to accom- 
 pany our author into a dive into futurity, and observe 
 
52 ESSAYS ON 
 
 the India revealed to us by his prophetic gaze. 
 We find then presented to our admiring vision a 
 number of independent States, over which, as in the 
 Colonies, floats the banner of England. Mr. Cot- 
 ton points to a distant future for the realization of 
 his dream, but one not so distant as that steps 
 should not be taken now to facilitate its fulfilment. 
 In fact, it is clear from his book that he thinks it 
 ought to come before the amalgamation of Hindus 
 and Mahomedans. Bearing this in mind, let us look 
 at it a little more closely. Mr. Cotton's idea is that 
 India should consist entirely of small States, each 
 with a prince at its head, with an aristocracy, a par- 
 liament, and an army composed of its own subjects. 
 Taking steps to produce this state of things, he calls 
 "political reorganisation." The. first thing that 
 strikes one is that it seems quite opposed to the 
 grand idea of a common Indian nationality with which 
 the first chapter opened. The next thing is that in 
 an Eastern country no parliament would stand a 
 chance of holding its own against a king at the head 
 of his army, so the poor parliaments would at once fall. 
 The next thing is that the different States would 
 vary enormously in military strength. Bengal, for 
 example, would be no match for Oudh, and the 
 weakest would soon become subject peoples again, 
 which is the calamity to prevent which all this 
 elaborate machinery has been set afoot. Another 
 point worth considering is that the great spirit of 
 progress which English influence is breathing into 
 British India, which according to our author has made 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. S3 
 
 the Presidency Towns the most important centres 
 of thought, and which makes so conspicuous a differ- 
 ence between British India and the Native States, 
 would be stopped, and India would return to purely 
 Oriental methods until Russia came to relieve her of 
 the responsibility of self-government.. Mr. Cotton's 
 method of disposing of the difficulty of the divergence 
 of Hindus and Mahomedans is very curious. It is 
 not quite certain what he means, for his language, 
 which is generally very clear and lucid, becomes 
 vague and ambiguous here ; but I understand him to 
 mean this : that the Hindu and Mahomedan aristoc- 
 racies are to be sorted out into different parts of the 
 country, and each given supreme power in its new 
 position. So that India would consist of Mahomedan 
 and Hindu States, the upper classes in each State 
 consisting solely of members of the dominant race, 
 while the lower classes would be mixed. The first 
 obvious objection to this scheme, if possible, is that 
 where the governors consisted entirely of men of one 
 race, and the bulk of the people of another, no very 
 great improvement, as far as national self-govern- 
 ment goes, would have been effected. The spec- 
 tacle may be witnessed in Cashmere, and is not par- 
 ticularly encouraging. Better one would say a mix- 
 ed Hindu and Mahomedan aristocracy if the rights 
 of the common people of both creeds are to be pro- 
 tected. But it is unnecessary to dwell at length on 
 this suggestion because it is quite impracticable. 
 " The British Government should extend a helping 
 hand to assist this natural tendency " of the Hindu 
 
S4 ESSAYS ON 
 
 and Mahomedan aristocracies to separate to different 
 parts of the country. I do not know in what part 
 of the country the natural tendency alluded to is 
 observed. In the North-West Provinces the pre- 
 vailing natural tendency seems to be for the unwar- 
 like usurers — the banias — 'to buy up and cheat out 
 the noble old martial races, Hindu and Mahomedan 
 alike, and to oust them from their lands. And this 
 tendency, far from offering any basis for political 
 reconstruction, is one of the least hopeful signs of 
 the future, for the banias are about as popular as their 
 brethren the Jews in Germany and Russia, and are 
 absolutely without powers of self-defence. But as 
 for the British Government, or, to speak more accu- 
 rately, " the party, of foreign occupiers " assisting this 
 movement, bodily clearing off all the Mahomedans of 
 wealth and good family, and Importing Hindu gran- 
 dees to occupy their estates and step into their social 
 position, the suggestion is worthy of Mahomed Tugh- 
 lak.* And when Mahomedan nobility have been re- 
 planted, how can we prevent the banias from buying 
 them up again .-' Like that of the land the settlement 
 cannot be a permanent one, but a fresh sorting out 
 will frequently be required as after a communists' re- 
 distribution of money. Mr. Cotton's great complaint 
 of the "foreign occupiers" is that they have interfered 
 too much ; that they have played too paternal a part ; 
 that their railways have been too great a shock for 
 the instincts of a conservative people; but all that 
 
 * A Mahomedan Emperor who marched ofip the whole city of Delhi by 
 force to the Deccan, and thereby caused infinite suffering and misery. His 
 other acts were equally interesting and mad, 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 55 
 
 they have done would be child's play compared with 
 what he now calls on them to do. The aristocrats 
 are to be driven from the associations of home and 
 from the lands their ancestors have held for centuries. 
 And who are the aristocrats? By no means only the 
 rich classes, for many a poor man has a far higher 
 social position than his rich neighbours. But if the 
 charge can be brought home to any man that he is 
 a genuine aristocrat, he must be hunted out like a 
 French Prince and transported. Mr. Cotton is a 
 humane man, and would no doubt not like to see 
 this done; but it is the logical outcome of his solitary 
 proposal for dealing with the most obvious and 
 greatest difficulty that besets his scheme. Like 
 many other Indian reformers, he does not think out 
 carefully enough the results of his proposed reforms. 
 Although he shows in one part of his book that he 
 has observed some of the salient facts of Indian 
 politics, yet when he evolves his plans of reform he 
 practically ignores them. He commences his book 
 with an exhortation to Englishmen to undertake 
 the task of political reorganization. But political 
 reorganization cannot leave out of account the great 
 hidden and complicated forces of Indian society, to 
 the elucidation of which he devotes so little atten- 
 tion. If with easy-going assurance it ignore them, 
 and beguile itself with- the .agreeable delusion 
 that an Indian nationality exists when it is but a 
 shadow, its efforts will be doomed to disappoint- 
 ment and failure. The.se are the things which 
 make any radical change in the government of India 
 
S6 ESSAYS ON 
 
 SO extremely difficult, and these are the questions 
 on which we want all the light that independent and 
 thoughtful men can give. Anyone who shall fully 
 grasp all the different political forces at work in 
 India, and point out in detail how better institutions 
 can be created which shall meet all the difficulties 
 that arise and work well, will have performed a 
 service for which he will receive the gratitude, not 
 only of the people of India, but of many of the 
 Anglo-Indians whom, in his book, Mr. Cotton so 
 unsparingly condemns. 
 
 In chapter III, entitled "The increased bitter- 
 ness of race feeHng, " Mr. Cotton deals with a very 
 deHcate subject, the prejudices that exist in the 
 minds of Englishmen and Natives of India against 
 one another. A great deal that he says is unfortu- 
 nately true : at the same time I do not think he has 
 been happy in his treatment of the subject. For 
 the first object of any man who has the welfare of 
 India at heart should be to do all in his power to 
 allay these cursed sentiments, which are th'e harbin- 
 gers of terrible ill for India; to encourage good 
 feeling by inducing each side to be forbearing and 
 to do justice to the other : and not to embitter them, 
 as I fear Mr. Cotton's book is calculated to do. 
 What can be the good of raking up a paragraph 
 from some disgusting paper, inflamed by the worst 
 passions aroused by the Ilbert Bill, and giving it as 
 a fair specimen of Anglo-Indian feeling ? No doubt 
 the English community, as a whole, holds aloof too 
 much from the people and comes too little in contact 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 57 
 
 with their inner Hfe and thought ; entertains an 
 unfair opinion of their merits ; is not sufficiently 
 sympathetic with their aspirations and progress. 
 No doubt here and there Englishmen behave with 
 intolerable rudeness to native gentlemen. These 
 are facts which Englishmen in India are apt to be 
 blind to ; which apologists f^r British rule are apt to 
 forget. A certain merit therefore pertains to men 
 like Mr. Cotton who shew this side of the picture. 
 But they should at the same time state their case with 
 proper qualifications, and point out clearly the natural 
 causes at work which remove much blame from 
 private individuals. They should first be careful to 
 do justice to the very large number who are honestly 
 and conscientiously doing their best for the progress 
 of the country. Such men are to be found in every 
 service and in all positions. Living often under 
 circumstances very trying for men who have been 
 brought up surrounded by the thousand intellectual 
 luxuries of England, they unostentatiously devote their 
 lives to the service of the people. In the next place, 
 the causes that induce many Englishmen to change 
 their manners towards the people should be pointed 
 out. • If a man does not strike out himself into the sea 
 of native life, he is sure to come in contact chiefly 
 with the less admirable characters in the community. 
 He is beset by sycophants and office-seekers. He 
 finds that to protect himself from the pertinacity 
 of some of the latter, he is obliged to adopt a tone 
 of rudeness he has never found it> necessary to use 
 before, India requires an Englishman to possess a 
 
5 8. ESSAYS ON 
 
 graduated scale of manners adapted for different 
 kinds of people instead of the simple more demo- 
 cratic manners of England. A dozen more causes 
 could be mentioned, showing how the faults we 
 complain of in the English community are the 
 result rather of natural causes than of individual 
 vice, and could be removed to a large extent if the 
 circumstances could be altered. Again, it should be 
 pointed out how a single' bad instance of rudeness 
 shown by some underbred Englishman travels up 
 and down the community with electric rapidity, and 
 creates a most exaggerated impression of the atti- 
 tude of Englishmen towards the people of India. 
 Again, it would be absurd to put the blame for this 
 state of things wholly on one side. The people 
 of India have as distorted views of Englishmen 
 as Englishmen have of the people of India. The 
 current beliefs of Indian society as to English 
 domestic life are as fallacious and as calculated to 
 wound the sentiments of Englishmen as the con- 
 tempt of an ill-educated Englishman is galling to 
 an Indian gentleman. A great deal of forbearance 
 is needed on both sides. But very little is shewn 
 by writers of the school of Mr.- Cotton. Their idea 
 of fairness is to turn round on their own country- 
 men and paint them in the blackest colours for the 
 abhorrence of the English at home.' It cannot be 
 expected then that Anglo-Indians who cherish as 
 one of their strongest sentiments a passionate 
 attachment to their mother-country, who look for- 
 ward to a peaceful old age among the hills and 
 
INDIAN TOPICS, 59 
 
 meadows and cities of their native land, and who 
 feel that, whatever their defects, they are doing as 
 much for the honour of their country as any other 
 class of Englishmen, should accept with gratitude 
 the writings of authors, one of whose main objects 
 seems to be to prepare English public opinion to 
 receive them with dislike and contempt on their 
 return. No man is to be praised for abjuring senti- 
 ments of patriotism. A Mahomedan who held up 
 his people for the contempt and dislike of others 
 would be despised, not only by his own countrymen, 
 but by everybody. We admire him if he tells his 
 countrymen of their faults with the view of correct- 
 ing them. , But books like Mr. Cotton's are not cal- 
 culated to correct the faults of Anglo-Indians. Any 
 great reform must be made by an appeal to men's 
 hearts. I believe a great reform is needed; but if it is 
 to be brought about, it must be by an appeal to the 
 nobler side of the English character, and not by stir- 
 ring up just feelings of resentment. Again, nothing 
 could be in worse taste than Mr. Cotton's allusion to 
 the prejudices entertained by English ladies. A full 
 statement of their position in India would shew their 
 prejudices to be only too intelligible. But however 
 that may be, the ladies of all races in India are 
 naturally more exclusive than men in their ideas. And 
 whether they be right or wrong, it is revolting to 
 every sentiment of chivalry, and of tender regard for 
 that section of humanity which gives happiness and 
 comfort to our homes, to drag them into a controversy 
 of this sort, I have spoken of the effect produced" 
 
6o ESSAYS ON 
 
 by this method of treating the subject on the people 
 of England and on Anglo-Indians. It remains to' 
 say a word on, its effect on the people of India. The 
 best way to encourage good feeling is to make sure 
 that people appreciate each other's virtues. The 
 first thing for the people of England to do is to un- 
 derstand the virtues of the people of India, and the 
 first thing for the people of India to do is to under- 
 stand the virtue's of the people of England. The 
 spirit that both sides should cultivate is admirably 
 indicated by Sir John Malcolm in his address to the 
 Civilians of Central India.* " The manner of Euro- 
 pean superiors towards the natives," he says, 
 "must be a habit of mind, grounded on a favour- 
 able consideration of the qualities and merits of 
 those to whom it extends ; and this impression, 
 I am satisfied, every person will have, who, 
 after attaining a thorough knowledge of the real 
 character of those with whom he has intercourse, 
 shall judge them, without prejudice or self-conceit, 
 by a standard which is suited to their beliefs, their 
 usages, their habits, their occupations, their rank 
 in life, the ideas they have imbibed from infancy, 
 and the stage of civilization to which the community 
 as a whole are advanced. If he does so with that 
 knowledge and that temper, of mind which are essen- 
 tial to render him competent to form an opinion, 
 he will find enough virtue, enough of docility and 
 disposition to improvement, enough of regard and 
 observance of all the best and most sacred ties of 
 
 * Political History of India by Sir John Malcolm, Vol, II, p, cclxvii. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 6l 
 
 society, to create an esteem for individuals, and an 
 interest in the community, which, when grounded on a 
 sincere conviction of its being deserved, will render 
 his kindness natural and conciliating." 
 
 I have said a good deal about "this matter. I 
 fear I have said almost too much. And if anything 
 I have said is calculated to ruffle rather than appease 
 these pernicious sentiments of race animosity, I sin- 
 cerely regret having said anything. It is extremely 
 difficult to form a judgment on this subject, which 
 shall give due weight to the innumerable bewildering 
 facts that meet one. On the one hand, we find a 
 strong universal feeling of discontent among all the 
 races' of India, and especially among the upper and 
 more influential classes, at the attitude borne towards 
 them by the English community — a discontent whose 
 origin is social and not political. On the other hand, 
 the easy explanation of simply laying this down to 
 the personal faults of Anglo-Indians becomes more 
 and' more untenable, the more one sees into the situ- 
 ation. And inasmuch as the discontent has a so- 
 cial origin, it is perfectly clear that if a healthy state 
 of things is to be produced, it must be through the 
 medium of the English who come in contact with the 
 people, i.e., Anglo-Indians, and not by trying to ride 
 roughshod over them by means of the English in 
 England. The great result to be attained is that 
 Englishmen, Hindus, and Mahomedans, may all alike 
 feel they are component parts, and have a share 
 in the glory of a magnificent and enlightened 
 Empire. This mysterious union of East and West 
 
62 ESSAYS ON 
 
 ' should be beneficial not to the former only. In es- 
 timating the value of India to England, most people 
 dwell only on the material side. They point to 
 the amount of British trade with India. But India 
 might have a much higher value for the English if 
 we knew as a nation how to appreciate her — a 
 moral and intellectual value. It is the narrowest 
 opinion of Western prejudice to suppose that all 
 beautiful ideals, all noble and profound thoughts on 
 life, all graces of civilization, have been collected in 
 Europe alone. , The East, which has given birth to 
 every religion which dominates mankind, has yet, I 
 believe, something to teach the West. In this age 
 of violent industrial competition, of socialism, of 
 communism, and of nihilism ; of the decay of old 
 faiths and the pessimistic wails of philosophers and 
 poets, it may act as a soothing and peace-giving 
 influence on many a mind oppressed by the fever 
 heat of modern intellectual life to go to India, to 
 live among its people, and to breathe in the gentle 
 influence of ideals of life that belong to a far earlier 
 but a simpler and fresher period of the world's ex- 
 istence, England need fear no impoverishment of 
 her intellectual life by her closer union with India, 
 It is the ardent aspiration of many Natives of India 
 and of many Anglo-Indians that this union may 
 become every day a closer one, and that the Asiatic 
 and British subjects of Her Majesty may be united 
 by growing ties of affection and respect. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS, 63 
 
 THE NATIONAL CONGRESS. 
 
 The idea of an annual Congress, at which 
 educated Indian gentlemen from all parts of the 
 country and belonging to all nationalities, should meet 
 and discuss questions of the day, is a happy one. 
 From the exchange of views of people engaged in 
 similar tasks, or grappling with the same intellectual 
 problems, useful suggestions and fresh ideas often 
 emerge. The occasion offers, moreover, an op- 
 portunity for the exercise of hospitality and pleasant 
 social intercourse, and, for the general public, gives 
 a topic for conversation that tends to enliven the 
 somewhat dull atmosphere of Indian politics. If, 
 however, the members of such a Congress claim for 
 themselves a representative character, and for any 
 decisions at which they may jointly arrive the 
 weight attached to the unanimous opinion of India, 
 and urge upon Government the expediency of 
 adopting their proposals for political reform, then, 
 indeed, they invite criticism of a most searching 
 character, both as to the grounds of their claim and 
 the wisdom of their suggestions. The two " Na- 
 tional Congresses" hitherto held have proclaimed 
 as the chief upshot of their proceedings a verdict in 
 favour of the introduction of representative institu- 
 tions into India, and it seems to be a foregone con- 
 clusion that the approaching meeting at Madras 
 will endorse their opinion. In fact, in the public 
 
64 ESSAYS ON 
 
 mind, the National Congress has become identi- 
 fied with this political scheme, to a criticism of 
 which the following lines are devoted. Now to 
 many men this task may appear superfluous. The 
 notion of violating all historic continuity ; of expect- 
 ing a people saturated through the centuries of its 
 long life with the traditions of autocratic rule to 
 shake off at once its old feelings and habits, and 
 transform itself into a modern democracy ; of assum- 
 ing that institutions which work not without friction 
 in those nations which are most homogeneous and 
 have been longest trained ia< their exercise could 
 be adapted to a population five times as great as 
 the largest in which they have hitherto been tried, 
 and as varied and heterogeneous as the diverse peo- 
 ples of Europe, seems to many thoughtful men, both 
 English and Native; so preposterous as to need 
 no refutation. Nevertheless, it would be optimistic 
 to assume that unwise opinions have no effect in 
 determining the course of events ; nor should we 
 trust too much to the wisdom of our rulers in Eng- 
 land. The giving of a parliament and an extended 
 suffrage to Cape Colony, with a population of two 
 Boers and twelve Zulus and other African savages 
 to every Englishman, is an experiment in legislation 
 so amazing and indicates so absolute a faith that 
 the potential blessings of the ballot-box are co- 
 extensive with humanity, that those people in India 
 who hold vieiws which, by contrast with the prevail- 
 ing radicalism and so-called nationalism of the Native 
 Press, may be styled Conservative and Imperial, 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 65 
 
 should I think be more active than they have hither- 
 to been in ventilating their opinions and pointing 
 out the facts on which they are based. 
 
 There are, it seems to me,^at least four insur- 
 mountable obstacles to the success of representative 
 institutions in India : to wit, the ignorance of the 
 peasantry, the absence of a class from which to 
 select capable statesmen and legislators, the inabi- 
 lity of a parliament to control the army, and the 
 mixture of nationalities. First let us consider the 
 ignorance of the peasantry. The essence of parlia- 
 mentary government is that it is popular govern- 
 ment ; it is a device by which the millions of 
 common men in a country control the action of the 
 State : the will of the people is the paramount 
 power. They effect it by keeping a check on their 
 representatives, and so effective is that check that 
 the eyes of members of parliament are ever fixed on 
 their constituencies, and the actions of English 
 statesmen are curbed by the effect they are likely to 
 produce on the popular mind. The virtues of po- 
 pular government are : — Firsts the great stability of 
 the constitution, due to its being backed up by 
 more than half the people ; secondly, that the poor 
 classes have a means of checking the natural 
 ■tendency to selfish legislation in the governors. 
 Does any one imagine that the people of India are 
 capable of performing this political feat ? More than 
 90 per cent of the population are peasants. Real 
 representative government means government sub- 
 ject to the control of the peasantry. The Indian 
 
66 ESSAYS ON 
 
 peasant is unable to protect himself from the exaction 
 of his zemindar or the extortions of the policeman. 
 Has he the independence or the wisdom to direct the 
 affairs of this great Empire ? The ryot is a man, not 
 without a certain culture of mind and of feeling : he 
 has a wonderful knowledge of old ballads and of 
 the mythology of his religion ; but his ignorance of 
 politics is abysmal. Clearly he could, through his 
 representative, exercise no control over the supreme 
 legislature. And if he could, would it be desirable ? 
 What would he do ? Perhaps forbid cow-killing, 
 and spend the national income on temple-building 
 and religious celebrations. Certainly his government 
 would be a government of ignorance and of super- 
 stition. It is, I contend, neither possible nor desir- 
 able that the peasant should govern India. And 
 unless he exercise real control over the government, 
 there can be no true representative government in 
 India. It is conceivable, however, that a form of 
 government might be established of an apparently 
 representative character. By a limited suffrage, 
 or by municipaHties, men might be chosen from the 
 different districts or divisions to sit in a legislative 
 assembly at Calcutta, local questions being left 
 to subordinate assemblies in the provincial capi- 
 tals. This form of government, though not popu- 
 lar, would yet be representative of a small section 
 of the people, and may be styled pseudo-represent- 
 ative. It is presumably some such government 
 that the leaders of the 'National Congress wish to 
 see established. Let us, by a constructive effort of 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 67 
 
 the imagination, call it into existence and examine 
 its nature. The class which it would in the main 
 represent is the English educated class. No other 
 class would be well enough informed to possess 
 much influence, even if it were a numerically large 
 proportion of the electorate. The government, 
 therefore, would be neither popular as the English, 
 nor bureaucratic as the Indian, but would be a 
 species of oligarchy, giving complete political 
 supremacy to a class forming a minute percentage 
 of the population. Now the pseudo-representative 
 government would lack the two great virtues of 
 popular government which are generally held to 
 balance its defects — its stability and its impartiality 
 — while it would npt secure us the efficiency of our 
 present method. 
 
 First, as regards stability and strength, a prime 
 requisite in an Indian government, it is to be ob- 
 served that the English educated class does not at 
 present hold in its hands the keys of the magazines 
 of physical force in this country. They have no 
 control over the native army, nor over those 
 classes of warlike peasantry which form the inflam- 
 mable material of the country. There are two 
 ways in which a government may command the 
 allegiance of the masses. The one is by appealing 
 to them directly, as in England ; the other is by 
 reaching them through their leaders. The former 
 of these methods is impossible in India on account of 
 the ignorance of the people. There is, I suppose, no 
 doubt that although Government may protect the 
 
68 ESSAYS ON 
 
 ryots against the oppression of the taluqdar, yet in a 
 time of civil war they would join his standard 
 rather than that of the Government. They are, 
 as they were at the time of the Mutiny, completely 
 under the influence of their hereditary chiefs, who 
 are Conservatives of a palseozoic type ; and in some 
 cases, such as the wahabis, of their fanatical religious 
 teachers. This is a fact which our political globe- 
 trotters rarely recognise. Familiarity with modern 
 political notions, though ultimately a great assistance, 
 acts at first rather as an impediment in coming to a 
 true knowledge of the East, as it leads the mind off 
 on wrong tracks, and makes it jump by analogy to 
 false conclusions. But our visitors think otherwise. 
 Flattering themselves that their training in Western 
 politics gives them a vast superiority over residents , 
 of the country in appreciating the importance of po- 
 pular sentiment, estimated by them by the cheap 
 method of reading newspapers and talking in their 
 own language to casual men they meet, they offer 
 the Indian statesman many prudential truisms about 
 the danger of resisting national aspirations, which, 
 as they cannot look below the surface, they com- 
 pletely misunderstand, identifying them with such 
 sentiments as are expressed at the National Con- 
 gress, Thus Mr. Slagg, M. P., called the first 
 National Congress the handwriting on the wall in 
 Belshazzar's palace. Poor Mr. Slagg! It may be 
 laid as a charge against the supporters of this insti- 
 tution that they encourage these pleasant illusions, 
 not so much because they like to be thought terrible 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 69 
 
 fellows who could, if they chose, by a nod raise the 
 whole country into rebellion, or, if conciliated, guar- 
 antee its loyalty, as because of their great use in 
 tending to promote the aims in view. To this con- 
 sideration must be attributed the anxiety felt by 
 men who otherwise show but little sympathy towards 
 that nation to induce the Mahomedans to take a 
 part in this annual demonstration, and thereby in- 
 crease the effect on the mind of the untutored poli- 
 tician. Even as it is the National Congress dazzles 
 the travelling M. P., who at once thinks that he has 
 the whole moral dynamite of India bottled up in a 
 room. As I said this is not the case. But so often 
 is it stated to be by the Native Press and by 
 Mr. Hume, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Lai Mohun Ghose and 
 others, that I will give a concrete example taken 
 from British India, which, in the spread of modern 
 ideas, is far ahead of the Native States. The fight- 
 ing men in the district of Aligarh, containing a po- 
 pulation of about a million, are under the control of 
 the following families : — The Sherwani Afghans, 
 who settled here in the time of the Pathan Empe- 
 rors ; the Syeds of Jelali, a noble Shia family 
 which has supplied many good officers, civil and 
 military, to Government ; the Lalkhani Pathans, 
 converted Rajpyts, one of whom was prime minis- 
 ter of a large Native State ; the unconverted Raj- 
 puts, and the great Jat taluqdars. The chiefs of 
 these clans, numbering, we will say, about two dozen, 
 fine strong men, fonder of horses and guns than 
 of newspapers and congresses, are all ignorant of 
 
70 . ESSAYS ON 
 
 English, and some of them, are bitterly opposed to 
 its teaching, which they think destructive of the 
 faith and customs of their ancestors. Of their 
 children a small minority are learning. Probably 
 the next generation will send their sons to school, 
 and in two generations, or some sixty years, the 
 district of Aligarh may have a landed gentry speak- 
 ing English, if they have not been by then eaten 
 up by the banias. To satisfy the aspirations of 
 these men, one of which is for a military career, 
 nothing is done, so much is our attention takea up 
 with the attempt to conciliate irreconcilable journa- 
 lists, mistaking those that wear the lion's skin for 
 the royal beast himself. 
 
 The claim, therefore, of the National Congress 
 to represent the voice of India we may dismiss as 
 unfounded. We have shown that our pseudo- 
 representative or mock-popular system would not 
 possess the first merit of popular government — its 
 stability : it remains to investigate how far it would 
 possess its freedom from partiality. Now, the fact 
 that the cry that one class should have absolute 
 power begins and ends with that class, is no proof 
 that it is less disinterested than other classes. All 
 classes and most individuals love power," sometimes 
 for itself, sometimes as a means of beneficence ; and 
 who appreciate it better or enjoy it more than we 
 Anglo-Indians ? My opponents may say that now 
 India is governed by one class, what loss of impar- 
 tiality if it be governed by another ? To this two 
 answers are open. Either it may be said that one 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 71 
 
 of these classes is more disinterested than the other ; 
 or, the bureaucratic system in vogue may be 
 pronounced more impartial than a representative 
 oligarchy. The first of these answers involves a 
 thesis as inviHious as it is difficult to prove : it is 
 better to assume that in any class self-interest is the 
 rule and self-sacrifice the exception. But the 
 second position is real and tangible; and I hold 
 that if government by a class is unavoidable, the 
 present bureaucratic system is more free from gross 
 partiality than a representative one would be. Sup- 
 pose India were governed by a parliament compos- 
 ed of, and elected by, the Anglo-Indian population : 
 would it - not be tenfold less impartial than the 
 present government .'' Our Anglo-Indian statesmen, 
 actuated by deep policy or by a genuine desire 
 for the progress of the people who have been so 
 mysteriously entrusted to the care of Eng- 
 land, represent a policy far in advance of, nay 
 that could be distilled out of Anglo- India by uni- 
 versal suffrage. How many native high court 
 judges would there have been if it had depended on 
 this vote ? Or how many statutory civilians, de- 
 puty collectors and subordinate judges ? Would 
 the income-tax — that most just of taxes — have been 
 imposed if either of the classes in question had 
 formed the electorate ? The absurd agitation over 
 the Ilbert Bill showed how much bile could be 
 stirred up both in English and native communities 
 by applying popular methods to India. The first 
 essential of the Indian Government is that, based 
 
72 ESSAYS ON 
 
 on a true knowledge of popular sentiment and on 
 an impartial regard of the interests of all classes,, 
 it should possess a strength that can afford to 
 neglect alike the prejudiced suggestions of Defence 
 Associations and the interested prdposals of the 
 Native Press. We have indications enough that the 
 class that supports the latter is not without the 
 human failing of partiality. Its ever reiterated cry- 
 is to open all civil appointments to competitive 
 examination, i.e., to take them all to itself. Any 
 regard for classes less advanced is stigmatised as 
 iniquitous. And as to whether it is phenomenally 
 anxious to do justice to the Government that has 
 called it into existence, let those who read the papers 
 judge. 
 
 We must abandon, therefore, the hope of 
 securing by the proposed system the impartiality of a 
 popular government. We have now to consider its 
 probable efficiency, and this brings us to our second 
 difficulty : where are the members of parliament, 
 the capable legislators and statesmen, to come 
 from ? No organisation, no institution however 
 perfect, can be a success unless the human units 
 composing it be each adequately equipped for the 
 task assigned him. And for the government of an 
 Empire, many men prov.ided with technical know- 
 ledge of varied description, endowed with the high- 
 est practical faculties, and trained by long experience, 
 are needed. Some people think the government of 
 a country a task not beyond the capabilities of an 
 average intellect. It is admitted that the engineer 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 73 
 
 who has to construct a bridge, the lawyer who must 
 master an intricate case, the doctor who heals the 
 diseases of the body, all require a long special train- 
 ing ; but any fool is supposed capable of constructing 
 a State, of dealing with foreign diplomacy, and of 
 prescribing for the diseases of the body politic. 
 This idea is as prevalent in England as here, — 
 perhaps more so ; but luckily there is a large body 
 of men of independent means who have been train- 
 ed since youth in the art of government, and into 
 whose hands the Actual business falls : there is our 
 aristocracy, which always produces a crop of good 
 statemen and able diplomatists : and there is our 
 enormous highly-educated and affluent middle class, 
 which is the political backbone of the nation. Has 
 India any such resources ? Her aristocracy is, from 
 want of training, obviously incompetent for the 
 work, and she has no middle class like ours. Her 
 ablest men are either in government service or in 
 the legal profession. As these two classes depend 
 for their livelihood on their work, they cannot afford 
 to give their lives to legislation. Only when they 
 retire would it be possible. But parliamentary 
 government requires men to devote to it the best 
 years of their manhood. A house composed of illi- 
 terate ignoramuses, with a leaven of superannuated 
 Government servants and briefless barristers, could 
 not supply the requisite brain-power for dealing with 
 such matters as foreign policy, the land laws, the 
 currency questions and fiscal matters, which tax to 
 their full the powers of the human intellect. The 
 
74 ESSAYS ON 
 
 difficulty of selecting a very few competent men 
 for the Legislative Councils is a sufificient illus- 
 tration. In a country like India, where highly-train- 
 ed ability is very scarce, the State must make 
 the most economical use of the materials at hand. 
 And that is done at present by attempting to select 
 the best men when young, training them for a long 
 period of years in administration, and from these 
 choosing out the most distinguished for the great 
 offices of State. Parenthetically one may remark 
 that there can be no greater cause for anxiety as to 
 the future than the doubt whether the present me- 
 thod of recruiting in England for the Civil Service 
 is furnishing us with the best material available 
 for the manufacture of statesmen. From the facts 
 stated above, there is every reason to believe that 
 the first breakdown of a representative system in 
 India would arise from the inefficiency of the 
 governing body. But this difficulty, while at present 
 the most serious, will, if the British rule lasts, be the 
 first to disappear. In two generations' time it is 
 not inconceivable that there may be an educated 
 aristocracy, and an influential middle class grown 
 out of the development of industry -and commerce. 
 And it will no doubt be the aim of wise statesman- 
 ship to devise some method of giving these classes, 
 which will have the greatest stake in the country 
 and be the best possible conservative force and 
 guarantee of order, a part in political life without 
 imperilling the interests of other classes, there- 
 by satisfying their just aspirations to a greater 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 75 
 
 share in the glory and prestige of the British 
 Empire. 
 
 Wheh we come to consider the powers of the 
 proposed supreme padiament, and, ask what its rela- 
 tions are to be to the British Crown and the English 
 Parliament — whether it is to be entrusted with the 
 direction of foreign policy or confined in its action 
 to domestic affairs ; if the annual budget is to be 
 placed before it ; what powers, if any, it is to possess 
 over the Army and the Civil Service — .whether, in 
 fact, it is to have any executive authority or be only 
 a legislative machine, a fresh crop of difficulties 
 arise, one of which, the connection between the 
 parliament and the army, is singled out for discussion. 
 One or two remarks as to the position assigned to 
 their parliament in the radical party's ideas will clear 
 the ground. First of all the National Congress 
 proclaims its loyalty to the Queen. (Wonder, admi- 
 ration and delight on the countenance of the travel- 
 ling M. P., who never expected such loyalty in 
 a down-trodden people ! ) But as the Queen has no 
 political power, this profession would not in the 
 least constrain the free action of the parliament. 
 Now, a purely legislative assembly, which would 
 only make such alterations in the laws as are from 
 time to time needed, the Civil Service and adminis- 
 tration being left as they are, would probably not 
 satisfy the aspirations of the reformers, especially 
 as the executive would be able to nullify the 
 action of the parliament by only enforcing such 
 laws as it liked ; nor would a parliament having 
 
76 ESSAYS ON 
 
 no control over the purse-strings, for its power 
 would again be a shadow. We shall assume, 
 therefore, that the object of the reformers is a practi- 
 cally autonomous parliament, owning a nominal 
 allegiance to the Queen, free to make regulations 
 as to the mode of filling up the Civil Service (should 
 it think fit to retain that body), and controlling the 
 taxation and expenditure. The question now comes 
 —Should the Army, too, be under its orders, or is that 
 to be left under British control ? If the latter, then 
 foreign policy must also be excluded from our parlia- 
 ment, for no nation could consent to allow other 
 people to make what use they pleased of its army, 
 perhaps sacrificing it in some disastrous war. There- 
 fore the twenty crores or so required by the army in 
 peace time, and such further amounts as are needed 
 for war, must be voted by parliament without question. 
 Even then the position is ridiculous. That the British 
 should sit aside with a big' army, coming in when 
 called for to quell internal disturbance, supporting a 
 Government in which they have no share, and that 
 but for them would collapse, and enforcing laws of the 
 justice and wisdom of which they have not satisfied 
 themselves, would be a spectacle so anomalous and 
 so little suited to the self-respect of a great nation, 
 that we may, I think, dismiss it and consider the 
 other hypothesis, according to which the parliament 
 is to have full constitutional authority over the army. 
 But it is one thing to have it on paper and another to 
 have it in practice. How can five hundred unarmed 
 civilians control a hundred thousand armed soldiers? 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. TJ 
 
 This is the fundamental difficulty which has, however, 
 been so successfully overcome in England that we are 
 apt to forget its existence. But it is felt in other 
 countries, e. g., in Spain. In old India the civil was 
 always under the military authority. Even in British 
 times the army once gained the upper hand, and its 
 generals received from Indian potentates those 
 princely donations which enriched our Anglo-Indian 
 forefathers — a clear indication where the real power 
 lay. The safeguard in England rests in the fact 
 that the people so passionately love their institutions, 
 endeared to them by the history of centuries and by 
 their close connection with the national honour, that 
 they are ready to sacrifice their lives in defending 
 them, and, if the army attacked them, would arm 
 themselves and fight the army, as they did in the time 
 of Charles I. Perhaps even the most enthusiastic 
 of the advocates of the representative system in India 
 are hardly prepared to do that. But we have a still 
 better guarantee in England. If the head of the army 
 were to give an order that violated our constitu- 
 tion, the officers and soldiers would themselves lay 
 down their arms. In India the strongest political 
 sentiment is loyalty to a chief, and loyalty to parlia- 
 rnentary institutions must become stronger than that 
 before the soldiers will regard defiance of a parlia- 
 mentary vote a more heinous sin than disobedience 
 to their chiefs. Such a sentiment can only grow 
 when a strong feeling of nationality has arisen and 
 the national glory has been always associated with 
 the constitution. Time is, therefore, a necessary 
 
78 ESSAYS ON 
 
 condition of its growth. We seem to have arrived 
 at this dilemma. The parliament cannot exist 
 without possessing control over the army, but the 
 parliament cannot control the army until it has 
 existed a long time. How the English solved 
 this apparently hopeless problem, it is beyond 
 the scope of the present discussion to inquire. 
 Enough to say that in other European countries 
 it has not been done. In France it is considered 
 a wonder if they exist a score of years without a 
 revolution ; in Germany the parliament is not in- 
 dependent; in Russia there is none. And even in 
 England, in Oliver Cromwell's time, the army be- 
 came supreme and turned out the parliament. The 
 conclusion of the matter is, that until India reaches 
 a state so different from that in which she now is, 
 as no doubt in a thousand years she' may, that the 
 utmost flights of the human imagination are unable 
 to picture what she will be like, there is no hope 
 of a supreme autonomous parliament being able 
 unassisted to control an Indian army. 
 
 Leaving the main argument, let us make a 
 short digression on the functions of the army in 
 India, Our go-ahead reformers ask for its reduc- 
 tion ; it is not easy to say why. Do they want to 
 lay India at the feet of Russia? If not, it indicates 
 but a poor appreciation of the basis of the political 
 fabric. The army is the bulwark of our personal 
 liberties ; it guarantees us the peace and comfort of 
 our homes ; it is the great safeguard against internal 
 anarchy, and we trust it may, if necessary, prove the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 79 
 
 scourge of an invading enemy. It has this double 
 task to perform — the prevention of internal disorder 
 and protection against external enemies. When 
 people say that India is so loyal that the first task 
 is unnecessary, they are talking nonsense; when 
 they say it would be as loyal as this if the Queen's 
 Proclamation were interpreted differently, or if re- 
 presentative institutions were introduced, or any 
 other reforms effected, they are talking greater non- 
 sense. However loyal the country may be, in a 
 continent like India, there are bound to be rowdy 
 elements — restless adventurers, fanatics, dacoits — 
 who would like nothing better than a free fight. 
 Now the core of the army, the portion that, under all 
 circumstances, is absolutely reliable, is the section 
 composed of British soldiers. And the serious 
 question is — Have we enough of them in the coun- 
 try ? My Mahomedan friends have often expressed 
 grave apprehensions to me on this point. Brave 
 Thomas Atkins ! I confess to a feeling of emotion 
 when I see him here, thousands of miles from his 
 distant English home and from all who have cared 
 for him in his youth, ready to fight and die that we 
 may lead lives of ease and comfort. Another mat- 
 ter, I venture to suggest, is that it would do much 
 to render oiir government popular in India among 
 those classes whose loyalty is most valuable to us, 
 and would encourage an Imperial sentiment through- 
 out the whole community, if the native princes were 
 allowed to furnish their quota to the army, and if some 
 Indian officers were appointed equal in rank to British 
 
8o ESSAYS ON 
 
 officers. Is it not an indication of weak policy, of 
 lazily accepting shows for reality, that while we 
 rightly enough pay attention to the aspirations and 
 " grievances" of the educated civilians, who can in 
 time of difficulty render us no assistance, we en- 
 tirely neglect the aspirations of the army ? Is it 
 just ? The educated civilians have been raised by 
 our rule, the military classes depressed ; yet we 
 appoint the Public Service Commission for the 
 former and do nothing for the latter! It is by 
 virtue of the strong arms and brave hearts of 
 our native soldiers — of our Sikhs, our Gurkhas, 
 our Thakurs, our Musalmans — that the pros- 
 perous lawyer and the bold journalist exist. 
 They shed their blood wherever the Imperial 
 interests are at stake, not only in India, but in 
 Egypt, or wherever needed ; have they no claims 
 on our gratitude? Must we teach the people of 
 India that as long as they are patient and respect- 
 ful, like the army and the classes from which it is 
 drawn, they may expect nothing ; but when they 
 abuse us and our government and our women with 
 the filthiest epithets, then we will attend to their 
 wants ? This, indeed, is the lesson the people of 
 India are learning. We flatter ourselves that our 
 policy contrasts very favourably with that of Russia ; 
 but perhaps we flatter ourselves too much. Have 
 we really sounder political instincts ? Are we really 
 more liberal ? Do we seem so to our army ? We 
 may give medals to our native officers : Russia 
 gives command. We send our native officers to 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 
 
 the frontier, and they find a Mahomedan colonel 
 taking his rank among Russian gentlemen. In 
 appointing high native officers, we should select 
 young men of good family, and put them through 
 the same training in Sandhurst as English officers ; 
 they should be converted, as the high class native 
 can be, into thorough-going English gentlemen in 
 ideas and feelings. I have heard it used as an 
 argument against giving natives high posts of any sort 
 that they are unfit for the work unless Anglicised, 
 and if Anglicised the political advantage is lost. 
 The latter statement is not correct. However 
 much Anglicised' a native officer may be, yet his 
 name, his colour, the knowledge that the blood of 
 his race flows in his veins, will produce the desired 
 political effect. Let me leave this and challenge 
 the Congress- wallahs with a fourth objection to their 
 scheme. 
 
 This may be stated in the following proposi- 
 tion : — T^a^ parliamentary government is unsuited 
 to a country containing two or more nations, tending 
 to oppress the numerically weaker and provoke it 
 to rebellion. It is well to examine more closely 
 the action of parliaments. The ideal scheme of 
 bringing together a number of wise men to give their 
 independent opinions on every question of State as 
 it arises has been found unrealisable in practice. 
 The ministers must be sure of the support of the 
 house during the period of their office, and this can 
 be achieved only by their possessing a majority 
 pledged to support them. Thus in those countries 
 
82 ESSAYS ON 
 
 in which the parliamentary system works best, the 
 country divides itself into two parties, one of which 
 governs absolutely for the time it is in power. 
 Where this is not the case, as in France, the 
 government is unstable as water. It is important to 
 observe that in England both the executive and 
 legislation are entirely in the hands of the predomi- 
 nant party ; and that the only effective check on this 
 party's proceedings is the fear lest, by a number of 
 uncertain voters changing sides, they may be placed 
 in a minority in the next election. The great vice 
 of party government is that party is often preferred 
 to country. It moreover encourages ill feeling and 
 unreasonable prejudice in one half of the population 
 against the other, although comparatively few can 
 say why they are Liberals or Conservatives ; and 
 leads even respectable and intelligent men into 
 the grossest and most unjust abuse of their oppo- 
 nents. Even in the Bengal Press we could hardly 
 find anything more offensive than a remark 
 of the Saturday Review s, calling the members 
 of Parliament who voted with Mr. Gladstone 
 " a mass of human lees and dregs." Now, what 
 would be the effect of party government in India ? 
 Let me take the North-West Provinces as an exam- 
 ple. The two parties would obviously be Hindu and 
 Mahomedan, for they exist ready at hand. Now 
 if Liberals and Conservatives can be incited by 
 party government to blows, what may we expect 
 from an aggravation of the already strained feelings 
 of these two religious bodies ? Moreover, the Hindu 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 83 
 
 party, being in a majority that would fear no change 
 of religion in the voters, would be absolute masters, 
 as no Mahomedan Emperor ever was. The tempo- 
 rary triumph would, however, be dearly bought, for 
 people who believe themselves to be physically 
 superior would not tamely submit. The case has 
 already been seen in Ireland, whose representa- 
 tives have always been outvoted by the English. 
 The only difference would be that the Irish are 
 guaranteed a certain number of members, while here, 
 as in every district the Mahomedans are in a minor- 
 ity, there is no reason why they should have 
 a single representative, especially as the English 
 educated classes would have most influence, 
 and there are twenty times as many Hindu as 
 Mahomedan graduates annually produced. Already 
 this is seen in municipalities. I think a rule 
 ought to be made that in any town in which two or 
 more nationalities exist in considerable numbers, the 
 number of municipal councillors belonging to any one 
 class should not exceed that of all others put together, 
 including the English members. Otherwise local 
 self-government introduces on a small scale the 
 evils here depicted on a large. The action of a 
 free parliament in the North- West Provinees would 
 tend, I imagine, to exclude from appointments and 
 extinguish the political influence of the race that 
 were masters here for six centuries, the superb monu- 
 ments of whose taste now remain as the finest spec- 
 tacle offered the visitor tx) India — a race that still 
 remembers thq past, and that counts among its allies 
 
84 ESSAYS ON 
 
 not only men in every Province in India, but the 
 hardy Afghan beyond the frontier, the Turkoman, 
 and the Arab. This would hardly be a wise policy 
 even for those who are their bitter enemies to pur- 
 sue. The growing hostility to the followers of 
 Islam among the newly-educated Hindus is not an 
 amiable feature of the times. Even those who most 
 resent the subjection in which their race was placed 
 by the Mahomedan should recollect that in the 
 East the right of conquest is the right to rule, 
 and that few powerful monarchs have been so gener- 
 ous as Akbar ; and should reflect that the position 
 accorded to the Chamar by the ruling Brahman was 
 not particularly exalted. The above considerations 
 will show why the Mahomedans took so little part in 
 last year's Congress. It was not, as Mr. Herbert 
 Gladstone informed the English public, on account 
 of their backwardness in English education, for the 
 responsible leaders, not only in Calcutta, but in the 
 North-Western Provinces and Hyderabad, inten- 
 tionally abstained, but because, having their own 
 traditions as to how government should be conducted, 
 they are profoundly suspicious of so new-fangled a 
 scheme, and furthermore, because they have no 
 wish to put a rope round their own necks and place 
 themselves at the mercy of those who have hold of 
 the other end. 
 
 The supporters of the representative scheme 
 attempt to answer this objection in two ways. Either 
 it is boldly affirmed that the people of India form one 
 nation — a position taken up by Mr. Cotton in the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 85 
 
 beginning of his book, but repudiated by him towards 
 the end, where he recommends a wholesale shuffling 
 of Hindus and Mahomedans to different parts of 
 the country — or it is said that common interests will 
 unite the different peoples. It would be waste of 
 time to discuss the former of these at length. Neither 
 in race, which is of Aryan, Semetic, Mongolian 
 and aboriginal stocks ; nor in religion, which em- 
 braces the two extremes of opposition ; nor in lan- 
 guage, some dozen or two different ones being spok- 
 en ; nor in law, the courts administering various sys- 
 tems ; nor in culture, Arabic and Sanskrit represent- 
 ing the opposite poles of the Mahomedan and Hin- 
 du men of learning respectively ; nor in traditions, 
 the glory of the one being the humiliation of the 
 other ; nor in character, social life, manners, and cus- 
 toms are the different peoples of India one. Such 
 feeling as exists tending to bind the people of India 
 in classes is partly national, as among Sikhs and 
 Bengalis ; partly religious, as among Mahomedans ; 
 partly of caste, as among Mahratta Brahmans ; partly 
 of clans and families ; and partly communal, giving a 
 feeling of unity to the inhabitants of one village. 
 The progress of European ideas will probably 
 tend to merge the minor classes in broad national 
 distinctions, and thereby intensify purely national 
 feeling. Hence, as time goes on, this fourth diffi- 
 culty will increase rather than diminish. The second 
 position, that all have common interests, is difificult 
 to prove. The only common interests I see are, first, 
 as against the Anglo- Indian in securing appoint- 
 
86 ESSAYS ON 
 
 ments ; and, second, against a foreign enemy. The 
 latter has never proved a sufficient bond of union in 
 India, while the former would almost disappear 
 with the creation of the parliament. On the other 
 hand, in the great question of government appoint- 
 ments, the different classes are vitally opposed, 
 while the religious difference will always be a 
 fertile ground of dispute. The conclusion of the 
 whole matter is that the representative system 
 proposed by the National Congress would not be true 
 popular government, but government by a class ; 
 would be neither stable nor impartial ; would be in the 
 hands of incompetent men ; be helpless before the 
 army ; and offer no solution of the problem how the 
 different nations scattered throughout India are to live 
 at peace with one another ; but would fan race preju- 
 dice and provoke civil war. The idea is an import- 
 ation from Europe, and has not arisen, as a natural 
 solution of the problems before us, from a study of 
 the facts of the country. If we are to copy any- 
 thing from the West, we must compare India with 
 the whole of Europe and not with a small homoge- 
 neous nation like England. Now, a parliament for 
 the whole of Europe is an obvious impossibility. 
 And the present political state of Europe, with all 
 the nations armed to tj^e teeth against one another, 
 and engaged every now and then in tremendous 
 wars which become more terrible every decade, 
 is not the most attractive ideal to put before India. 
 Rather let us have patience, work slowly and 
 surely towards absorbing a larger element of the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 87 
 
 diverse native races into the administration, give 
 time for the development of the splendid latent ca- 
 pacity of human intellect to which every generation 
 in India gives abortive birth, and for the great 
 industrial future which will raise India to such a 
 state of material prosperity as she has never before 
 ■enjoyed, and cast to the winds these ill-digested and 
 illusory schemes, the realisation of which would be 
 the triumph of anarchy. 
 
88 ESSAYS ON 
 
 SOCIAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN 
 ENGLISHMEN AND INDIANS. 
 
 To THE Editor of the " Pioneer." 
 
 Sir, — Will you allow me to make a few re- 
 marks in critiscim of your leader on social inter- 
 course between Englishmen and Natives ? In that 
 'article you state that "the wretched and miser- 
 able difficulties about eating arid drinking are at 
 the root of the whole trouble. " I do not agree 
 with you in this. In the first place, there are 
 thousands of Mahomedans in these Provinces 
 who have thrown over this superstition. I say 
 "thousands," but it is difficult for me to form 
 an exact estimate. I have myself, however, dined 
 with several hundreds. These men would enjoy 
 social intercourse with Englishmen, but they cannot 
 easily take the first step. On our part very small 
 efforts are made to meet them, but if we wished it, 
 this pleasant intercourse might be increased one 
 hundred-fold. Furthermore, although not eating 
 together is an undoubted barrier, yet I personally 
 have found that human sympathies are not so 
 powerless that they cannot overleap it. The world 
 would be for me poorer if some Hindus, whom I 
 call my friends, were not in it. I do not wish to 
 blame my countrymen, for it is as natural that they 
 should prefer their own society as it is that they 
 should prefer the English costume. And I know 
 there are a dozen causes which create the gulf, not 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 8g 
 
 the least of which is that some of those who swim 
 across from the native shore have come for personal 
 objects, which prove at last a solvent of all their 
 friendships. The Englishman, if he wishes to taste 
 the real pleasures of intercourse with Easterns, 
 must plunge himself into Eastern society. In so 
 doing, he must encounter difficulties and discomfort. 
 But he will be repaid in the end. There are men 
 of culture in native society, men versed in the 
 literature of Persia and Arabia, who would be 
 received as equals in the best literary society of 
 Europe, whom no Englishman takes the trouble to 
 know. I have seen it with my eyes. I put it down 
 to indifference. " Can any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth ? " some think. Yes, if poetry be good, 
 if ancient traditions be good, if that peculiar Eastern 
 sentiment which has charmed the poets of the West 
 be good. An Englishman would probably be 
 dubbed a lunatic if he confessed that the only thing 
 which made life tolerable in his Indian exile was 
 the culture, the interest, and the affection he found 
 in native society. Such an Englishman will, there- 
 fore, at most hint at his condition. 
 
 When this want of intercourse between the 
 communities, or a reasonable number of people of 
 each, is fixed on my attention, I often feel, with a 
 sinking of the heart, that the end of the British 
 Indian Empire is not distant. The evils that come 
 from it are gigantic ; the leaders of the people are 
 disgusted ; ridiculous, false impressions of English- 
 men and the malign intentions of Government are 
 
go ESSAYS ON 
 
 rampant in native society ; and the English rulers 
 are easily hoodwinked, whether by a clever aspirant 
 for office or a noisy National Congress. They do 
 not see the real structure of native society, nor the 
 terrible danger that looms ahead from the steady 
 decline in prosperity of every martial race in India, 
 and the rapid progress of the money-lender. Real 
 social intercourse is the cement which would make 
 strong the political edifice. I agree with Nawab 
 Mahdi Hasan in thinking it the duty of Englishmen 
 in India, or at least of the ruling section, to make 
 some effort towards the patriotic task of producing 
 it. I believe the matter is not so difficult as it 
 looks. The English residents of Aligarh, for ex- 
 ample, have shown that many people are glad to 
 meet native gentlemen when they have the chance, 
 and be friends with them. Dinner-parties, cricket, 
 whist, billiards, penny-readings, &c., are occasions 
 of this agreeable social intercourse. There are 
 hundreds of English people who are ready to meet 
 native gentlemen, if the occasion present itself. 
 Some effort is needed on both sides, for while the 
 Englishman has in his hands the power of initiative, 
 the native has considerable power of making it im- 
 possible. And that is what the entire Bengali Press 
 seems determined to do. A never-ending series of 
 articles abusing the Government and every English 
 official or private man who displeases them can only 
 produce in the Englishman a feeling of disgust, 
 which makes social intercourse with the gentlemen 
 in question the last thing he would seek. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. pj 
 
 Nor is the modest request of the National Con- 
 gress, that the whole government of the country 
 should be given into the hands of the numerical major- 
 ity, likely to prove a source of sympathy between 
 the Englishman, Hindu and Mahomedan. But I 
 forget. For we told that in an elective assembly, if 
 there be one Englishman or ten Mahomedans, and a 
 hundred others, it is as much a benefit to the 
 Englishman and the Mahomedans as to the others. 
 The assembly is a kind of paradise which benefits 
 every one who enters it and all whom he represents, 
 quite apart from the trifling consideration as to 
 whether his side is in a majority or a minority. 
 Therefore I will present my bow to that august 
 assemblage, and not bring it into this discussion. If 
 what I have said, sir, about an evil which it seems 
 to me is of gigantic magnitude, and for which we, 
 Englishmen of the present generation, are largely 
 responsible — if it tend in the direction Of lessening 
 the evil, then I shall be a happy man, although you 
 Mr. Editor, picturing me enveloped in hookah smoke 
 discussing the manners of Islam, may pity me for a 
 fool, and point to the manly exercise of the tennis- 
 field and > the subtleties of the whist table as the 
 proper recreation of John Bull. But if my remarks, 
 like much that is written on the subject, tend 
 to aggravate the matter, then I shall be sorry I 
 touched it. As one whose circumstances have com- 
 pelled him to see more of the people of India than 
 the average Englishman, I can only say that the 
 effort repays itself, and that, incredible though it may 
 
92 ESSAYS ON 
 
 appear, all degrees of friendship and intimacy are 
 possible between the Anglo- Indian and his Eastern 
 fellow-subject. Let me close with a line from 
 Bacon : — " If a man be gracious and courteous 
 to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, 
 and that his heart is no island cut off from other 
 lands, but a continent that joins to them." 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 93 
 
 IN WHAT WILL IT END ? 
 
 Jack Cade : There shall be in England seven halfpenny 
 loaves sold for a penny. All shall eat and drink on my score ; 
 and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree 
 like brothers and worship me their lord. Go to Sirrah 1 Tell the 
 king from me that for his father's sake, Henry the Fifth, I am 
 content he shall reign ; but I'll be protector over him. Now 
 show yourselves, men ; 'tis for liberty. We will not have one 
 . lord, one gentleman. Away, burn all the records of the realm : 
 my mouth shall be the Parliament of England. — (Shakespeare : 
 Henry VI, Part II, Act IV). 
 
 I. 
 
 As it is my belief that the agitation of which 
 the National Congress is the visible head will, if un- 
 checked, sooner or later end in a mutiny, with its 
 accompanying horrors and massacres, followed by a 
 terrible retaliation on the part of the British Govern- 
 ment, bringing absolute ruin for the Musalman, the 
 Rajput and other brave races, and resulting in the 
 retardation of all progress, I wish to place before 
 my countrymen the reasons which have led me to 
 form this opinion, and to invite a refutation of the 
 arguments adduced. We had a sharp lesson in 1857 
 about the inadvisability of not studying the under- 
 currents of thought in India, and I fear that if we let 
 the Bengali Press and the Congress agitation go on 
 for another ten or twenty years, we shall have as 
 disagreeable an awakening as we had then. 
 
 There are two things to be distinguished in the 
 National Congress : first, its object ; second, its 
 
94 ESSAYS ON 
 
 modus operandi or method. In its method lies the - 
 danger. Were its object not visionary and unat- 
 tainable, but wise and beneficial, the danger would 
 still exist, unless a radical change were made in the 
 means by which it was sought to eHect the object. 
 But before pointing out the latent danger of the 
 method, let me say a few words about the object 
 — the proposed reconstitution of the Legislative 
 Councils. 
 
 One of the speakers in the last Congress did 
 me the honour of alluding to some criticisms of mine 
 on the proposal to introduce parliamentary govern- 
 ment into India. He said, and many papers which 
 criticised me also said, that the intention of the 
 Congress stopped far short of a parliament, and was 
 confined to the scheme about Legislative Councils, 
 and therefore that all my arguments were beside 
 the mark. But I note in the " Tamil Catechism," 
 printed at the end of the report of the Madras Con- 
 gress, the following question and answer : — 
 
 " Q. — Then you think the Congress will really 
 be of great use ? " 
 
 "A. — Yes, most certainly ; for one of the best 
 means of promoting the welfare of India is the estab- 
 lishment of a Grand Council on the lines of the 
 English Parliament, and if persevered in and wisely 
 guided and supported by the whole country, the 
 Congress will gradually, when India is fit for this, 
 be converted into an Indian Parliament, which 
 will take the place of the sham Councils of the 
 present day." 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 95 
 
 From this and a hundred other indications, I 
 conclude that I was right in thinking that a parlia- 
 ment is what the promoters of this movement have 
 as their goal, and that the assurance that the only- 
 object is a reconstitution of the Legislative Councils 
 is the language of diplomacy. But I will leave 
 the parliament aside. I will suppose that the ulti- 
 mate ambition of the Congresswallahs is their pro- 
 posed reform of the Legislative Councils, and that if 
 Government suggested going a step further, every 
 man who now supports the Congress would turn 
 round and oppose such a proceeding as too radical. 
 I will now discuss this measure, which its advocates 
 complacently describe as extremely moderate. 
 
 The proposal, as formulated by the National Con- 
 gress, contains seven distinct clauses, some of them 
 embodying several distinct propositions, and to all 
 these clauses and propositions six hundred men gave 
 unanimous consent! In the first clause it is stated 
 that the number of meijibers on the Legislative 
 Councils is to be " materially increased," and of 
 these not less than one-half are to be elected, 
 while not more than one-fourth are to be members 
 ex-o-fficio, and not more than one-fourth nominated 
 by Government. In the sixth clause it states that 
 " all legislative measures and all financial questions, 
 including all budgets, whether these involve new 
 or enhanced taxation or not, are to be necessarily 
 submitted to and dealt with by these Councils." It 
 will thus be seen that the elected members have 
 only to gain one supporter among the official or 
 
g6 ESSAYS ON 
 
 nominated members to secure a majority and be 
 absolute. The use to which this reformed Council 
 is to be put, is thus described by Mr. Surendronath 
 Banerji, the proposer of the- motion : — " It is im- 
 possible to think of a domestic grievance, or a 
 matter of domestic complaint, which will not be 
 remedied, if the constitution of the Councils were 
 changed and remodelled according to qur pro- 
 gramme. Talk of the separation of judicial from 
 executive functions, why, the reform would be effect- 
 ed at once, if we had the making of our own laws. 
 Talk of the wider employment of our countrymen 
 in the public service, why the Queen's Proclamation 
 would be vindicated to the letter (applause), if we 
 had some control over the management of our 
 domestic concerns (applause). You fret and fume 
 under the rigour of an income-tax which touches 
 even the means of subsistence, why the incidence of 
 the tax would be altered, the minimum raised, if we 
 had anything to do with the imposition of the tax, or 
 if we were permitted to modify it (applause)." 
 Some further notice of the magnitude of the demand 
 may be gathered from the philanthropic froth of an 
 English lawyer who is innocently trying to ignite the 
 gunpowder. "The day will come," said Mr. Eard- 
 ley Norton, "when an infinitely larger and truer 
 freedom will be yours, when the great question of 
 taxation will be within your grasp, when you will in 
 truth realise that you have got something more 
 than mere potential power, when you shall place 
 your hand upon the purse-strings of the country and 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 97 
 
 the Government. (Loud and continued applause). 
 Money is power, whether it be in the hands of an 
 individual or of a Government. He who has the 
 dispensing of money is he who has the control of all 
 ultimate authority (cheers). Once you control the 
 finances, you will taste the true meaning of power 
 and of freedom (cheers)." 
 
 NoM» let us suppose these Councils constituted, 
 and let us suppose Government to propose a 
 measure, for example the income-tax, to which these 
 high-minded democrats object. There are two pos- 
 sibilities. Either the elected members support the 
 Government, or they oppose it. It is pretty clear 
 which they will do; but suppose, for the sake of ar- 
 gument, they support it. Is anyone so foolish as to 
 imagine that it will be less unpopular because the 
 elected members agree to it? Everyone will think 
 that Government coerced them. They cannot take 
 on their shoulders the odium and the responsibility 
 which everyone rightly attributes to Government. 
 Nor can Government shirk this responsibility. 
 Now, suppose they oppose the Government. Is it 
 conceivable that under these circumstances Govern- 
 ment could continue to govern ? They want money 
 to pay the army and their servants, and the Council: 
 refuses them. They are to bear the weight of the 
 responsibility ; they are to protect the country 
 from Russia ; they are to prevent the martial races 
 of Upper India, Behar, and other places from throw- 
 ing off the yoke of the native rulers belonging to 
 castes and races whom they despise, placed over 
 
98 ESSAYS ON 
 
 them by competitive examination ; and yet they 
 are to have no power. The electorate is to " taste 
 the true meaning of power and of freedom " — without 
 the responsibility. Well, in this case of Govern- 
 ment finding itself frustrated by the Council — the 
 case to which Mr. Surendronath Banerji looks 
 forward with delight, the only case in fact which 
 gives any point to the Congress propo%|l — what 
 is Government to do.'' It must do one of two 
 things : either abolish the Council, or retire from the 
 country. The former case will cause great exasper- 
 ation ; the latter we do not intend to do, nor do 
 the Congresswallahs want it. The experiment of 
 these mixed Councils has been tried in the West 
 Indies, and Mr. Froude points out that it is one of 
 the causes of their decline in prosperity. The 
 elected members, he says, always vote against 
 Government, and thereby the greatest amount of 
 friction is produced and the greatest unpopularity 
 of the Governor. In Jamaica, when Government 
 overrode the decision of the elected members, a 
 Negro gentleman, named Gordon, a well-meaning 
 agitator, called a big public meeting against Govern- 
 ment. The Negroes went armed. Some English 
 soldiers went to see: a fight ensued, the Negroes 
 began to ravage the land, the country was put under 
 martial law, Gordon was hanged, and the Con- 
 stitution was abolished. That incident gives a 
 graphic picture of what would probably take place 
 in India, but on a hundred times bigger scale, if this 
 proposal of the Congress were adopted. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 99 
 
 But there is a minor measure which Govern- 
 ment might adopt, without such disastrous conse- 
 quences. A change might be made in the present 
 Legislative Council by which a small number of 
 native members might be elected by specified con- 
 stituencies, no increased power being given to the 
 Councils, and no handle in the executive. Such a 
 reform would possess a specious resemblance to the 
 proposal of the National Congress, and it is not 
 inconceivable that Government might throw it out 
 as a sop. I venture to say that this would, in my 
 opinion, be a fatal mistake. It would as much satisfy 
 their appetite as a sparrow would that of a hungry 
 tiger, and it would give a gigantic stimulus to the 
 whole movement. Moreover, when there are so 
 few seats it would be very unfair to give any con- 
 stituencies or interests a permanent footing on the 
 Council. The Parsees, for example, are a wealthy 
 and important community. If they were represented 
 according to their numbers in an Indian Parliament, 
 then in a Parliament of the preposterous dimensions 
 of 3,000 members there ought to be only one Parsee. 
 The measure would be unfair on those who were 
 left unrepresented. For the elected members would 
 consider it their duty to push the interests of their 
 constituencies. And thus the Government, too, 
 would lose, for this duty towards the constituency 
 would conflict with the Imperial duty which alone 
 should animate the members. A further objection 
 to this measure is that it would insert the thin end 
 of the wedge for the agitators ever to hammer at, 
 
100 ESSAYS ON 
 
 and it would disguise the true nature of the British 
 power in India, which is, and must be, a despotism, 
 controlled not by ignorant masses, but by the law of 
 duty. A cosmopolitan bureaucracy, with the 
 ultimate authority in the hands of Englishmen, 
 is, it seems to me, the only possible ambition for 
 the Indian political idealist. 
 
 Besides this main demand of the JMational 
 Congress, there are a number of minor proposals 
 which are some objectionable, some unobjection- 
 able. I do not propose to discuss them, because 
 they would carry me far away from the main thesis. 
 They have to be noticed only as showing in 
 a plain and unmistakable way one of the princi- 
 ples constituting the modus operandi of the agi- 
 tators. The principle is this : — That the Congress 
 seeks to strengthen its hold on the community 
 by opening its doors to every kind of political 
 grievance. Thus, whife bent on one main object — 
 to seize the reins of Government — it encourages 
 everyone who cares for some other object to 
 join and vote for the representative proposal, in the 
 hope that the mighty uproar* when directed on his 
 pet scheme, will give Jt a chance. The army was 
 held out as a bait to the Mahomedans, but they 
 caught sight of the hook. The unofficial Euro- 
 peans and Eurasians with amazing simplicity . have 
 walked into the trap, and have of course been received 
 with open arms. Anyone with a following and a 
 grievance is welcome. It all adds fuel to the fire. 
 1 am now well launched off on the discussion of the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. lOI 
 
 method of the Congress, and I have to justify the 
 proposition I made at the commencement of this 
 discussion. And I ask now — What will be the effect 
 of this ? What will be the result of keeping open a 
 great grievance-shop in this Empire ? What will be 
 the effect on the minds of people who go and listen 
 for four or five days to glowing accounts of injus- 
 tice and mismanagement, brought in from all parts 
 of the continent ; to the brutality of this damnable 
 political agent, who " betrays his trust to his con- 
 science, his country, and his Queen ; " to the cruelty 
 of the Government which causes " thousands of their 
 countrymen and countrywomen to be killed every 
 year by tigers and leopards " because of the Arms 
 Act ? And when you have carefully hunted out every 
 grievance — and I suppose no one has no complaint — 
 and have collected them and tabulated them, and when 
 the whole year round the press reeks with them, and 
 once a year all the grievance-mongers co'me together 
 and blow off their eloquence, will it strengthen the 
 Empire ? It will be a great running sore which will 
 never heal because the ambition of the agitator will 
 demand fresh grievances as fast as any are re- 
 moved, and he will create them if they do not exist. 
 There will be no difficulty in this. In every coun- 
 try there are men dying of starvation; there are mis- 
 carriages of justice and acts of oppression — this is 
 the sad order of this world. Who that has once 
 seen the East End of London, with its million 
 inhabitants sunk in squalor, dirt, and misery, their 
 faces ingrained with degradation and suffering, can 
 
102 ESSAYS ON 
 
 forget the terrible sight ? Or the spectacle of our 
 great civilised city at night, with the drunken men 
 reeling out of the public houses and the brazen faces 
 of the women ? There is nothing so shocking as 
 this in India. But suppose. London were under 
 foreign rule instead of being under " the most en- 
 lightened Government in the world," all these mise- 
 ries would be wrongly put down to the foreigner, 
 and the forces of anarchy would arise in irj-esistible 
 strength. So it will be in India. The agitators 
 tell the people that all their ills, the miserable pover- 
 ty of sections of them, are due to the English, and 
 that their nostrum is a magic wand that will set all 
 right. The manufacture of grievances is already in 
 full swing. The .Congress could no more get on 
 without grievances than an English political party 
 could without a programme. For without grievances 
 it would die. And the Congress has to be kept 
 alive because, if Mr. Hume's ambition is to be 
 realised, it will some day wake up and find itself a 
 real Parliament. 
 
 I have now to discuss the spirit in which these 
 grievances are. laid before the public, and the means 
 adopted for stirring up the ignorant. I maintain 
 that this spirit and these means are disloyal and 
 seditious. I must now define the precise meaning 
 that I attach to the term "disloyal." For I shall 
 at once be told that the raising of three cheers for 
 the Queen is a frequent phenomenon in Congress 
 meetings, and that many of the delegates not only 
 say but feel they would be sorry for the English to. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 103 
 
 leave India. Granted. To doubt the fact would 
 be to doubt their sanity. But I still call them dis- 
 loyal. If a boy abused and injured his father to 
 whom he owed his means of support, I should call 
 him an undutiful son in spite of the fact that he 
 knew that his father's death would be his own ruin. 
 The loyalty which consists of not wishing the 
 British army to go, and yet of doing everything to 
 weaken the Government, trying to seize from it all the 
 power of rule and undermining its influence in the 
 hearts of the people, is a kind of loyalty I loathe. I 
 had rather have an honest foe than an insidious and 
 backbiting friend. Real loyalty tries to strengthen 
 the Government and breathes a spirit of gratitude. 
 The other loyalty is identical in its effects with the 
 disloyalty of a wily enemy. We judge of men by 
 their deeds and not by their words, and we judge of 
 their loyalty by whether their actions tend to re- 
 move the soreness from the hearts of men or to 
 aggravate it. 
 
 Coming now to the means adopted in this 
 Congress agitation, the essential feature is that 
 they do not confine their action to the educated 
 classes, but make every effort to extend it to the 
 ignorant. This tomfoolery about delegates neces- 
 sitates it. Mass meetings are held and addressed by 
 fiery orators ; and inflammatory literature is circu- 
 lated in the vernacular. Only the man who believes 
 in the infinite gullibility of the Englishman can dare 
 state that the masses in India can undet'stand the 
 question of the reform of the Legislative Councils, 
 
104 ESSAYS ON 
 
 of which they have never even heard the name. As 
 easily could a company of English rustics compre- 
 hend the philosophy of Kant. To understand how 
 the Hindu is to govern India under the cloak of the 
 British name by means of a representative system 
 imported from England, the English with their 
 swords standing by as the willing slaves of their 
 rulers, is a conception sufficiently difficult to tax the 
 intellectual resources of even a Calcutta graduate. 
 One broad issue arises at once to the popular mind. 
 British rule or Native rule ? And when the English 
 are abused and the grievances of the people are dwelt 
 on, can there be any doubt on which side they will 
 decide ? To illustrate this by an example : — At a 
 certain town a meeting was held, and as usual they 
 secured as chairman (by what means I will not spe- 
 cify) a Mahomedan, so as to keep up the deceitful 
 farce that the Mahomedans are with them. He 
 was an uneducated nobleman, with nothing but the 
 primitive ideas of rule in his head prevalent in the 
 savage land from which he hails. They stood up 
 and abused the English before him, one man calling 
 English Assistant Collectors monkeys. What will 
 be the effect on the mind of that wild and ignorant 
 chief ? I know of an unlettered Thakur Baron in a 
 Native State who asT<s of his friends when the next 
 mutiny is coming, being quite indifferent which side 
 he takes, but longing for something to relieve the 
 monotony of his dull life. I will not give his address 
 lest the Congresswallahs should invite him -to be 
 chairman of a meeting in his country, or should send 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 105 
 
 him a copy of the pamphlet to which I shall allude 
 further on, when I shall bring more specific charges 
 of disloyalty. 
 
 II. 
 
 In the first part of this discussion I pointed out 
 that the very constitution of the National Congress 
 was such that it was bound to foster a spirit of dis- 
 content and mutiny in the people ; that a Grievance 
 Hall, as a permanent institution, would be like a 
 running sore bringing all kinds of aches and pains 
 to the body politic ; and that the delegate system, 
 based as it was on popular support and popular dis- 
 content, was bound to encourage a kind of public 
 speaking and literature, the object of which would 
 be to picture in glowing colours the injustice of 
 Government. And thus, however strong and how- 
 ever loyal the hands that controlled the movement, 
 however much they might wish not to inflame dis- 
 content among the ignorant, it would be practically 
 impossible to prevent the National Congress and its 
 ramifications from becoming a deadly engine of 
 sedition. 
 
 What then will be its effect when the leaders 
 of this Congress, the authorised official heads, pub- 
 lish in their authorised official volumes,, and throw 
 broadcast over the land, as an example to their 
 followers in evqry district, literature of an actively 
 incendiary nature? At the end of the report, of 
 the National Congress is printed a pamphlet which, 
 I am told, has been largely circulated in the verna- 
 
id6 essays on 
 
 cular, in which case a certain number of potential 
 mutineers has probably been already created by it. 
 I shall make some extracts from this poisonous 
 tract, but I can, in so short a space, give no adequate 
 notion of the amount of venom hidden in it. I 
 request all who take an interest in public affairs, 
 and in the future of this glorious country and of its 
 gifted peoples, to purchase a copy of the report and 
 study the tract for themselves. It represents a 
 hypothetical conversation between a Congresswallah 
 (a Maulvi !) and a peasant. The Congresswallah 
 points to the difference in prosperity between two 
 villages — one ShaMshpur, which is owned jointly 
 by the villagers, and another Kambakthpur, owned 
 by an absentee Raja. The former is said to typify 
 India as it would be under a native representative 
 government, and the latter, India as it is under Bri- 
 tish rule. A vivid contrast is drawn between the 
 prosperity of Shamshpur and the misery of Kam- 
 bakthpur. Every misfortune from which our poor 
 peasants suffer, whether removable by Government 
 or beyond the resources of human power to cure — 
 the poverty, the extortions of the money-lender, the 
 oppression of the police, the ill-effects of canal 
 water — are described with studied accuracy as 
 ruining Kambakthpur, while from all of them 
 Shamshpur is free. With such illusions did Jack 
 Cade urge on his band of rebels. I will now 
 quote : — 
 
 Maulvi Farid-ud-din : — " But how does your, 
 village thrive .^" 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 107 
 
 Rambaksh : — " How does it thrive ? Why, 
 Maulvi Sahib, you know that there never is a day 
 but that there is some case from Kambakthpur 
 in Court ; that we are growing poorer and poorer ; 
 that land is going out of cuhivation ; that we have 
 scarcely oxen enough to plough what we still till. 
 Look down the street ; why the houses are half 
 of them nearly in ruins, and the two abkari shops 
 that the Sirkar has set up here are always full. 
 Even this chopal, built by our forefathers and so 
 much needed for our meetings and our guests, is now 
 in ruins. Look at Shamshpur. It is twice as po- 
 pulous as this bustee (village), and yet there is no 
 abkari shop there, and the lumbardar says there 
 never shall be, and so say they all. Thrive indeed ! 
 Of all the miserable places in this whole zila Kam- 
 bakthpur is nearly one of the worst." 
 
 Thus the British Government is charged with 
 making the people drunk by its liquor policy ; to its 
 door is laid the poverty of the peasantry ; and re- 
 gardless of facts, it is said that the poverty of the 
 country is increasing and the land is passing out of 
 cultivation. 
 
 Further on English officials, as a class, are thus 
 described : — " They don't know the difference be- 
 tween a 6-anna crop and a i6-anna crop, and press 
 in bad times for rent, so that we have to sell our 
 cattle ; they don't know who is reliable {matbir), and 
 they make advances, when none ought to be given, 
 to ne'er-do-weels that lose their money, and then say 
 we are all budmashes (bad characters, rogues), and 
 
loS ESSAYS ON 
 
 won't even give seed grain to the best of us, when 
 times are such that we really need it. And then 
 they are fussy and self-conceited, and won't hear a 
 word from any of us. There was the old tank there, 
 the Soorujkund, that from generation to generation 
 used to irrigate half the village ; that burst when I 
 was a boy fifty years ago. Well, we wanted the 
 Raja to repair this. It wouldn't have cost many 
 hundred rupees, and the whole village knew from 
 their forefathers how well it worked. But no ! 
 Naib Sahib knew better, he wouldn't listen to us. 
 ' What you cattle-folk know .■' Hold your tongues.' 
 He was all for new-fangled plans. He would bring 
 a kul (channel) of the Sirkari canal to irrigate the 
 village. We told him that canal water is cold, that 
 our land lay low, that it would not do. But what 
 was the use ? ' What you cattle- folk know ? Hold 
 your tongues ; ' and so the kul was brought, and 
 the first year it overflowed and swamped half the 
 crops, and then when the water dried up the canal 
 people came and measured up all the land, and 
 made us pay tax for ' one watering.' A fine thing 
 seeing it had ruined our crops. But we had to 
 pay, and now it is bringing the reh (a saline 
 efflorescence) all over our best lands. The Raja 
 pays no heed to us ; his naibs understand nothing 
 of our affairs. They order this and order that, press 
 us for money in season and out of season, they 
 know nothing of village matters themselves, and 
 they won't hear a word from us because they think 
 they are all-wise and we utter fools — and under 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 109 
 
 such a system {dastur), how can a village be other- 
 wise than ruined ? " 
 
 Thus, even our benevolent efforts to avert 
 famine by means of irrigation are used as a dagger 
 wherewith to stab us. I will close my extracts 
 with the following charming description of an 
 English Collector, Mr. Zabardast : — 
 
 Rambaksh : — " Remember him 1 Ram, Ram, 'ska 
 nam mut lo (don't mention him ), I bear his marks 
 now (where I can't show them to you Maulvi Sahib), 
 though it is twenty years ago. You see, his lushkar 
 (camp) came to our village. There was no grass 
 for the horses ; the Collector shouted to the Tahsildar> 
 who said Rambaksh was responsible. ' Oh,' said 
 the Sahib, striking me with his whip, ' ' you are the 
 son of a pig, the misbegotten (suar ka backa, karam- 
 zada). I'll teach you how to attend to orders. Here, 
 khlassi (tent-pitcher), tie him up and give him thirty 
 taints (blows with a cane), and lay it well on.' 
 Now the Tahsildar had never spoken a word 
 to me about the matter. I tried to explg.in this, 
 but the Sahib hit me over the mouth and face 
 with his whip, shouting out ' hold your tongue. I'll 
 teach you ! Tie him up, tie him up, flog his life 
 out; ' and I was dragged away and flogged till I be- 
 came insensible. It was a month before I could 
 walk. Yes, he was a bad one ; many Collectors have 
 ' I known — some good, some indifferent — but this was 
 the only real devil." 
 
 Now what does this mean, and what will it lead 
 to ? It means — if Government allows this sort of 
 
no ESSAYS ON 
 
 propaganda to go on — it means the massacre of 
 Englishmen and their wives and children. For on 
 what material is this seditious trash thrown ? Not 
 on the educated and cultured. Not on those who 
 owe their means of livelihood to British rule, and 
 who would be swept away at once if it went. Not 
 on men who are afraid of fighting. The people of 
 these Provinces are not cowards ; they love a fight 
 as well almost as an Englishman. We had examples 
 at Delhi and Etawah. And some -classes of these 
 people, notably the Mahomedan and the Thakur, 
 the most spirited and pugnacious, have lost terribly 
 by the turn in the political kaleidoscope. Religious 
 fanaticism is not yet dead. And the poverty of the 
 whole Mahomedan community and of the noble 
 families is so distressing, and their backwardness in 
 English education is so great, that only a Govern- 
 ment which was the slave of noise or doctrinaire 
 theories would frame measures in disregard of it. 
 Now if they are urged to dwell on their sorrows, 
 which are invariably laid to the British Government, 
 instead of trying to improve themselves by trade 
 and education, the result will be that disloyalty will 
 take its seat in their hearts. Do you think they 
 will stop at reform of the Legislative Councils ? 
 And do you think the Congress people who have 
 stirred up these passions can allay them ? They 
 would be blown away as butterflies in a hurricane. 
 
 The worst sufferers by a mutiny would be 
 Mahomedans. As far as savagery goes both sides 
 would have a good fling. At such a period men 
 
Indian topics. hi 
 
 become fiends, and the innocent and the guilty, the 
 strong and the defenceless, share the same fate. 
 The English nation, on whose benevolence at home 
 the Congresswallahs lay such stress, would forget all 
 about constitutions and elective councils, and cry 
 only for vengeance. But England would not lose 
 her national existence, while the Mahomedan would 
 be irretrievably ruined. This is why the Mahome- 
 dan leaders wish to keep their people from the 
 whirlpool of political agitation. My revered chief, 
 Sir Syed Ahmed, whose humble disciple in matters 
 political I boast myself, has pointed this out clearly. 
 No one has even grappled with his arguments, but 
 in place of reason a shower of mud and abuse has 
 been hurled at him ever since. He has been called 
 selfish, foolish, childish and a flatterer. But the 
 fact is people in other Provinces and of other na- 
 tions can in no way understand the circumstances 
 and feelings of the people here. The Bengali has 
 made enormous progress under British rule ; his 
 political star is in the ascendant; how can he 
 put hirnself in the position of the Musalman 
 whose greatness is in the past and who sees ruin 
 staring him in the face ? If in spite of this he 
 will disseminate his poisonous literature among 
 Mahomedans, have not Mahomedan patriots a right 
 to be angry ? In Bengal, Madras and Bombay, 
 there was no mutiny, though, if report be right, 
 materials exist for one in the last of these Provinces. 
 To people there it seems an unreality, a chimera. 
 But it is far otherwise here. Our old men were 
 
112 ESSAYS ON 
 
 middle aged in 1857. The Bombay Gazette urged 
 the Mahomedans of the N.-W. P. to indulge in 
 a little " wholesome grumbling," if they could find 
 anything to grumble about. Pray how, if we start 
 grumbling, are we to be sure that it will remain 
 "wholesome?" There is plenty for Mahomedans 
 to grumble at. This so-called self-Government of 
 the municipalities, in which Mahomedans have been 
 bound hand and foot and handed over to their 
 rivals to be governed by them, is a case in point. 
 An order just issued by the Bengal Government 
 that all minor appointments are to be given by 
 competitive examination — an order which will almost 
 destroy the Mahomedan middle-class which cannot 
 for one generation at least acquire English educa- 
 tion sufficient to compete with others, is another. 
 But rather than bring these things forward and 
 create a popular agitation, we will submit to them 
 as the lesser evil. Another Syed Ahmed, the 
 great Wahabi, and Maulvi Ismail, his supporter, 
 raised a • great popular agitation, but urged their 
 followers never to attack the British. They fought 
 the Sikhs, but after that what took place ? To 
 every thoughtful Mahomedan the idea of another 
 mutiny is as horrible, more horrible I believe than 
 to an Englishman; and to every Musalman lady 
 more dreadful even than to an English lady. 
 
 I have written the above on the supposition 
 that the promoters of this movement have no 
 ' desire of raising a storm, but are doing it unwit- 
 tingly, not knowing the country. But this is by no 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 113 
 
 means as certain as it at first sight appears. In 
 the report of the Congress, after many eloquent 
 harangues on urging forward "the chariot of India's 
 destined development," there comes with a sense 
 of infinite relief a speech by a man, Babu Ambica 
 Charan Muzamdar, who had the courage to express 
 opinions distasteful to the majority. He said: — 
 " There is a kind of maiiiacal writing in many of 
 the petty Vernacular papers that would qualify, 
 and should qualify, the writers for prison diet." 
 But he was shouted down. This is a small incident. 
 It would not be fair to press it too far. Of very 
 much more serious account as showing the conscious 
 drift of the movement is a pamphlet written by 
 Mr. Hume, "The Father of the Congress," 
 entitled The Star in the East. At the close are 
 printed some articles from the Indian Mirror, 
 evidently written by the same hand ; but whether 
 written by him or not, printed and sanctioned by 
 him in this pamphlet. These letters are actively 
 and consciously seditious. No one but a madman 
 would have written them if he did not wish to bring 
 the people to the verge of rebellion. I make the 
 following quotation: — 
 
 "We again quote Mr. Payne: — 'The settlers 
 (at Cape Colony) petitioned for Representative Gov- 
 ernment in 1 84 1, but their claims were neglected 
 {they took no measures to make themselves disagree- 
 able), and so little attention was paid to their wishes 
 that the Home Government, when the Australians 
 refused to take any more convicts, determined to 
 
114 ESSAYS ON 
 
 make the Cape a penal settlement, and in 1849 
 despatched a shipload of convicts to Cape Town. 
 The colonists, who were resolved to make a stand, 
 rose in arms and refused to allow them to be landed. 
 This incident fixed their claims on public attention, 
 and in the next year (1850) the Governor was em- 
 powered to summon a constituent council for the 
 purpose of settling a more acceptable form of 
 government.' 
 
 " Full responsible Government was then con- 
 ceded, and though their path, in other ways, has 
 been beset with thorns, this was the end of the 
 colonists' troubles with their Government. 
 
 " Now, can anything show more clearly than 
 this simple, unvarnished story that the whole secret 
 of eliciting reform at the hands of our good Lord 
 and Master, John Bull, is to make oneself disagree- 
 able ? You may apparently complain and petition ad 
 infinitum; thus did the Canadians, the Australians 
 and the Cape, but they took nothing by their 
 motions ; they might shout until they were hoarse, 
 but until they began to kick, to fight, or evince a 
 readiness to do so — until, in fact, they began- to 
 rriake themselves disagreeable in good earnest — no 
 one paid the slightest attention to them. 
 
 " Very clearly we have to make ourselves dis- 
 agreeable, and please God, as time goes on, we will 
 do so, and no mistake. But there are ways and 
 ways of doing things ; we do not approve of a 
 resort to arms. We shall not break either the laws 
 of God or man. We shall work within both con- 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 115 
 
 stitutional and common law and local law limits, 
 but we shall nevertheless hope to make ourselves 
 ultimately so stupendously disagreeable as to force 
 even our claims on public attention, and so secure 
 those modifications in the existing form of the ad- 
 ministration which are essential to the prosperity of 
 India, and the well-being of her now greatly de- 
 pressed and suffering population." 
 
 He also quotes Canada as rising inarms, praises 
 the Canadians for it, and says Indians must take 
 this lesson to heart, but not rise in arms. However, 
 if freedom of the Press and the right to agitate 
 be interfered with, he says : — " We also may begin 
 to think of sterner measures to vindicate our rights." 
 Is this direct incentive to mutiny or not ? Does it 
 or does it not tend to a repetition of those scenes 
 at which the whole world shuddered ? He brings 
 forward examples of colonies which have gained 
 the identical proposals of the National Congress 
 after, and only after, an appeal to arms. He lays 
 the greatest emphasis on this again and again, and 
 tells his followers to take the lesson of the colonies 
 to heart. He tells the people of India to take the 
 first steps towards this rebellion, and to make them- 
 selves "stupendously disagreeable." He says there 
 are other ■ ways of accomplishing this without an 
 appeal to arms, but he does not say what those 
 ways are. Then he says it would be wrong for In- 
 dians to mutiny; but he does not explain why it was 
 right in the colonists, as he positively asserts it was, 
 and would be wrong in the people of India. Now 
 
Il6 ESSAYS ON 
 
 Mr. Hume may wish us to believe that the sentence, 
 telling the people of India not to appeal to arms, is a 
 proof that there is nothing seditious in his intentions. 
 It is nothing of the sort. To have ended the reason- 
 ing with the natural conclusion, an exhortation to 
 revolt, would have been absolute treason, and would 
 have brought Mr. Hume within the compass of 
 the law. Therefore he gives . all the steps of the 
 reasoning and leaves his readers to draw the right 
 conclusion, himself cleverly ending up with an illogical 
 statement by which he seeks to evade the direct 
 charge of treason. No man who really wished to 
 keep the people quiet, and to dispel notions of revolt, 
 would have held up the picture of countries which 
 had gained what they wanted by Vevolt. A man 
 who wants to cure a drunkard does not place a glass 
 of brandy on the table before him, deliver an oration 
 on the delight of its flavour, tell him he can have it 
 by stretching out his hand, and that many people 
 have derived the greatest benefit from drinking 
 brandy, but that under present circumstances it 
 would be wiser if he abstained. 
 
 Furthermore.he insinuates that the people ought 
 to mutiny if freedom of the Press and the right to 
 agitate be removed. Why freedom of the Press 
 and the right to agitate in particular ? No one but 
 an Englishman would have singled out those two 
 things as the only causes justifying a rebellion. 
 There are many things an Oriental cares infinitely 
 more about — his religion, for example. And would 
 not anyone, Oriental or not, care more about the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 117 
 
 alleged poverty of the country — not to mention the 
 castigations of Mr. Zabardast ? A Press Act would 
 be no grievance to the people in Kambakthpur;may 
 they not rise for their many grievances which he is so 
 careful to point out to them ? And even if a Press 
 Act be the greatest evil the people of India could 
 suffer, is it not dangerous morality to teach them 
 that they have the right to rebel ? Perhaps, indeed, 
 Government will not carry its mania for license of the 
 . Press to such an exent as to allow active incentives to 
 revolt. Will Mr. Hume then be ready to stand by 
 his words ? Let him head the Congress and die the 
 death of a martyr, with as many Congresswallahs as 
 he can get to stand by him ! But let him not stir up 
 the Mahomedan and the Thakur to their ruin. 
 
 All this that I have said may appear to English 
 ears very unwarranted by the circumstances. I 
 don't think it will so appear to the ears of my Hin- 
 dustani countrymen. Everything looks quiet and 
 peaceable. Popular agitation flourishes in England 
 and nothing bad takes place. Yes ; but England is 
 not a conquered people under foreign rule. And, 
 moreover, the people there is king. Popular agita- 
 tion is nothing more than the working of the king's 
 mind. The constitution at once brings into effect the 
 people's wishes. But to talk of a " constitutional 
 agitation " when there is, and can be, no constitution, 
 is a perversion of language. And agitation without a 
 constitution to work it off on is the prelude of blood- 
 shed. Look at Ireland. And popular agitation in India 
 will inevitably-end in its becoming another Ireland on 
 
Il8 ESSAYS ON 
 
 a much larger scale. We live apart from the people, 
 and we take little trouble to see what is going on. 
 The thing is still in its infancy and could be checked. 
 The virus has not yet spread far in these Provinces. 
 But after a time it will be very difficult to check it. 
 It is no proof that because things are smooth and 
 quiet there is no danger. How was the Mutiny of 
 1857 ushered in .■* The Anglo- Indian world up to the 
 hour when the great tragedy burst upon them was 
 busily amusing itself as best it can in this country 
 with social nothings. And what were the causes of 
 this Mutiny? The generally assigned cause is that 
 the people feared their religion was about to be 
 touched by Government. This National Congress 
 is not a religious business. But religion is not the 
 only thing which affects men. Poverty is as 
 strong a provocative of crime as anything else. 
 Mr. Dadabhai Nowroji is diligently trying to prove 
 that India is growing poorer. This can produce no 
 harm in his own" community, who live like princes 
 and are a thousand times as rich as they used to be. 
 But on nations which are really impoverished it 
 may produce deadly effects. A political cause is 
 also given for the great Mutiny — the annexation of 
 Oudh. If the passions of the people be stirred 
 up about politics, there is no reason why there should 
 not be a mutiny. The soldiery will readily imbibe 
 the sentiments, and then all will be up. Mr. Hume 
 boasted that he and his organisation could reach the 
 soldiers and fill them with their sentiments and ideas. 
 The people will get ready and wait for a favourable 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 119 
 
 opportunity. If there be a single battle lost in a 
 fight with Russia, this will be taken as the signal, 
 and the whole of India will be aflame. 
 
 These are my reasons for believing that this 
 popular agitation will, if allowed to go on, ultimately 
 cause a mutiny. I will point out further on how, 
 as it seems to me, this agitation may be checked. 
 
 III. 
 
 In the two previous discussions I laid down the 
 proposition that popular political agitation — which 
 has now for the first time manifested itself in India 
 on a large scale — will, unless checked, presently 
 throw the country into a most terrible state of anar- 
 chy, and deliver it a prey to murder and rapine. 
 And that as regards this particular agitation of the 
 National Congress, the methods employed are so 
 noxious, characterised by a spirit of incendiarism so 
 rash and so reckless (more especially in the English 
 agitators), that it has become imperatively necessary 
 to grapple with the evil in good earnest, and to ap- 
 ply radical remedies for this dangerous disease. 
 
 To treat it effectively, we must first see clearly 
 its cause. I believe that the cause is entirely due 
 to ourselves, and that its remedy lies in our own 
 hands, if we can but overcome our own national de- 
 fects. The cause is the combination of two charac- 
 teristics of British politics— ^r.fA being slow to 
 remedy grievances and grant favours when not 
 clamoured for ; second, being easily moved when 
 sufficient clamour is raised. Now, the fact to be 
 
120 ESSAYS ON 
 
 laid hold of is, that while these principles are suited 
 to politics in England, in India they are fatal. I 
 will begin with the second. We indulge in the gi- 
 gantic fallacy of supposing that yielding to popular 
 agitation assuages it. Exactly the opposite is true. 
 For years and years the great standing grievance 
 of the Native Press has been the low age for ad- 
 mission to the Civil Service. At last a Public 
 Service Commission is made, which reports that the 
 age should be raised to 23. How much gratitude 
 is expressed ? That grievance is pigeon-holed, and 
 with increased energy they are calling for larger 
 concessions. We are so indoctrinated with our 
 English theories as to what is sound government, 
 borrowed from English history and from daily 
 English politics, that we have the greatest possible 
 difficulty in adapting ourselves to a country where 
 the people, Anglo-Indian as well as Native, is not 
 ruler but ruled. What is the height of wisdom in 
 the one country becomes the height of folly in the 
 other. The methods of democracy are as perni- 
 cious in India as those of despotism would be in 
 England. The English politician has no greater 
 difficulty than to shake himself free of his demo- 
 cratic predilections. As the Oriental is tempted to 
 flatter the king or high official, so the Englishman 
 flatters the populace. And we commit the error 
 when we come to India of trying to flatter that 
 small section of the people which talks, instead of 
 governing the whole people with firmness, impar- 
 tiality, and generosity. An eminent Anglo-Indian 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 121 
 
 official in London recently took to flattering even 
 the National Congress before its lustre was im- 
 paired. Our weak side has been discovered and 
 worked on. The least indication of measures un- 
 favourable to the class that commands the Press 
 has been met with volleys of abuse. Instead of 
 snapping our fingers at this abuse, we quail at it. 
 Government treads gingerly and cautiously, where- 
 as if it were well informed of the people it would 
 march boldly. Newspapers and public meetings 
 have a ludicrously strong effect on the English mind. 
 There is unfortunately some truth in Mr. Hume's 
 remark that John Bull is not easily moved without 
 a clamour ; and the impression is vastly exagger- 
 ated on the native mind, because the people who 
 never cease clamouring happen to be those, who are 
 best educated in English, and the prosperity due to 
 their education is attributed to the abuse. In this 
 the real danger lies. And to cure this defect of 
 ours — the tendency to give in to agitation — must 
 be our first effort. 
 
 On the other hand, as the necessary complement 
 of this, it is the part of the Indian Government to 
 show such favours from time to time as she can with- 
 out danger to the stability of her rule ; such acts as 
 a loving father would do for his sons. She should 
 dispense her favours royally ; her gifts should ema- 
 nate from her own Imperial pleasure ; there should 
 be no|kind of appearance that they have been extort- 
 ed from her ; nor should they smack of stinginess or 
 meanness. Now, it too often happens that the favours 
 
122 ESSAYS ON 
 
 we do the people appear as no favours at all, but 
 merely as concessions to popular demand, or as de- 
 vices for saving money. Government appears to be in 
 terror of the Native Press. The people who by their 
 pens and ink-bottles exercise this terrorism often 
 •mock at Government for being afraid of them. The 
 other races look on in amazement. Nor should the 
 gifts of Government bear the signs of stinginess and 
 of meanness, or be tainted with the flavour of race 
 partiality. I will give an example to illustrate my 
 meaning. We should never have been such fools 
 as to have reduced the pay and emoluments of the 
 high posts given to Natives if we had realised how 
 completely in the eyes of the Natives this robbed 
 them of their grace, showing Government not as 
 a generous Queen but as a mean huckster. If 
 economy was our object we might have tried other 
 methods ; but not this. The people of England 
 gladly spend half a million a year for the Royal ex- 
 penses. Would the people of India grudge a few 
 thousand rupees to complete the honour of those 
 few men of their own blood who enjoy high posts ? 
 We have yet to learn how to give favours so as to 
 win loyalty. 
 
 Hence the method I would suggest is that we 
 should make it a rule never to give in to agitation, 
 and 'the stronger the agitation, the more disloyal 
 its tendency, the harsher and the more stubborn 
 should we be. On the other hand, we should be 
 only too ready to do what we can, when the people 
 make their requests in a quiet and gentlemanly way 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 123 
 
 without Stirring up discontent. Better still, we 
 should of our own motion grant them favours. But 
 most important of all, we should show in a manner 
 unmistakable and patent to all that those nations 
 which are loyal and which refuse to hamper the 
 hands of Government gain and do not lose by their 
 loyalty. To neglect them, but to listen to the noisy 
 voices of the ungrateful, would be shameful ; it would 
 encourage ingratitude and discourage gratitude; 
 create sedition and dispel loyalty ; it would be poli- 
 tical insanity. If we follow these methods, agitation 
 will then very soon die a natural death. But as 
 long as we adhere to our present policy it will be 
 very difficult to keep it within bounds. The people 
 finding it pay, and intent only on an immediate 
 gain, will stir up sedition, disloyalty, and discontent, 
 regardless of the future dreadful consequences. 
 
 But it will be said : — " How are we to give 
 favours unless we know the wants of the people ? 
 Shall we not offend rather than please them by our 
 •mistakes ? And how are we to know the wants of 
 the people unless by the Press and by Con- 
 gresses the people indulge in a little ' wholesome 
 grumbling.' " The answer involves a statement of 
 what I regard as the radical weakness of our 
 Empire. If the Indian Government cannot by its 
 public servants know with absolute certainty the 
 wants of the people, or if, knowing them, it has not 
 the ^generosity, so far as practicable, to grant them, 
 then we are unfit to hold the Empire. At present 
 Englishmen, as a rule, live apart from the Natives. 
 
124 ESSAYS ON 
 
 It is a more comfortable way of finding out what 
 the people want to peruse a newspaper at chota- 
 haziri, or study a Congress report. One has been 
 accustomed to it at home, and why should one not 
 do it here, without the bother and inconvenience 
 and effort of mixing in Oriental society ? The 
 consequence is, the Press befools us to the top of 
 our bent. Its deliberate object is not to represent 
 the people, but to represent a party. This is 
 human nature. The fact is there are loads of 
 things the people feel. They feel first and foremost 
 our supercilious contempt for them ; they feel 
 aggravated and disgusted by the invidious dis- 
 tinctions we make between the pay of English and 
 Native officials in the same posts ; they feel the want 
 of a military career. If we lived among them we 
 should feel it more. We should know what to do, and 
 should do it. But it is objected that our hands are 
 tied by the Government at home which exerts, and 
 will continue to exert, a well-meant and most dis- 
 astrous influence on Indian statesmen. True. But 
 this is only one of the difficulties to be overcome. 
 With a body of men possessing the full confidence 
 of the people, minutely conversant with their ways 
 of thought, and with a good literary training, we 
 could easily keep that section of the British public 
 which takes an interest in Indian affairs sufficiently 
 well-informed to prevent foolish interference. But 
 for this we must know the people far better than we 
 do now. I firmly believe that if we go on recruit- 
 ing our Civil Service as we are now doing, the 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 125 
 
 Empire has not got a long life to run. We should 
 bring out men at a mature age, men of the best 
 University education and the highest intellectual 
 culture, men who have seen the world and know 
 that India is not the only country in which men are 
 selfish and are actuated by every kind of motive, 
 honourable and dishonourable. We should bring 
 out the very best and ablest men that England pro- 
 duces. For we shall need them. The first thing 
 to be done is to raise the age of competition. If 
 the best men will not compete, the salaries and other 
 emoluments of the posts must be increased. We 
 have to produce the future statesmen of India, and 
 to economise at the expense of having foolish 
 statesmen would be the most suicidal economy. If 
 competitive examination anyhow will not give us 
 the best men, we must invent another means. The 
 existence of an Empire is at stake, and it cannot be 
 sacrificed to fads. Then every man who comes out 
 must do so on the distinct understanding that he 
 must live among the people, and make himself so 
 much of an Oriental that by the vibration of his own 
 feelings he can say how the measures of Gov- 
 ernment will affect his fellow-men. The men 
 who built up our Empire did this, but now-a-days 
 a man who tries to do it is looked on by a large 
 number of his contrymen as a contemptible mad- 
 man, I do not hesitate to say that the conceptions 
 afloat in ordinary English society as to the native 
 character are grotesquely absurd and unjust. I 
 am not making any reflection on the honour, the 
 
126 ESSAYS ON 
 
 integrity, and the high character of the Anglo- 
 Indian community. I believe it would be impossi- 
 ble in England to find in any class a better body 
 of men. The notions prevalent there about us are 
 most unfair. The talk about Englishmen in India 
 losing their good qualities is nonsense — rather they 
 gain a certain tough fibre of manliness and hardihood. 
 But my complaint is that we do not cure a defect 
 common to Englishmen everywhere — our insu- 
 larity. The effort, I admit, is too great for the aver- 
 age man. We do not require it as a duty from the 
 engineer or the doctor. But from those who are to 
 be rulers of the country, the guardians of our nation- 
 al greatness, we have a right to demand it. But 
 there are difficulties, you say. Yes, there are diffi- 
 culties ; but with the history of our Empire before us 
 are we to shirk difficulties .'' There are in this no 
 difficulties which an Englishman, who sets his mind 
 to it, cannot overcome. The countrymen of Gordon 
 and of Raja Brooke have no right to talk about 
 difficulties. The honour of our country demands 
 it : that is enough. There are thousands of men 
 ready to die for her : are there none ready to live for 
 her ? To know the people, and to be so trusted 
 by them that they will open out to us the inmost re- 
 cesses of their hearts; to see them daily ; to come to 
 love them as those who have in their nature but an 
 average share of affection cannot help loving them, 
 when they know them well — this is our ideal for the 
 Indian Civilian. Some Englishmen act up to this 
 ideal : in the early days of our rule several did. 
 
INDIAN TOPICS. 127 
 
 If it become the normal thing the Indian Empire 
 will be built upon a rock so that nothing can shake 
 it. Agitation and sedition will vanish as ugly 
 shadows. Had it existed in 1857 the crash would 
 not have come. If now we can bring it about that 
 we have a thousand Englishmen in this country who, 
 from the ardour of their patriotism, their passionate 
 pride in the glory of our unrivalled country which has 
 encircled the world with its civilisation, will force 
 themselves to spend their days of exile in the 
 society, sometimes uncongenial, of their Eastern 
 brothers, knowing them as they know themselves, 
 then India will be linked to us by indissoluble ties, 
 and the name of England will remain for ever in 
 the world's history as having accomplished a feat 
 unparalleled for difficulty and benevolence. We may 
 then banish the nightmare of mutiny. But if we 
 continue in our supercilious contempt for the people, 
 if we remain indififerent to the effects of agita- 
 tion as being beneath our notice, then the day may 
 again come when society will be horror-struck by the 
 grim presence of living tragedy. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 1. On preventive measures. — The remedy I have sug- 
 gested in the last essay for political agitation is not suffi- 
 cient by itself I think to prevent disaster. Before it would 
 have time to operate the crash would probably arrive. It 
 is necessary to protect the ignorant populace from the 
 deadly effect of the irrational discontent that is every day 
 being propagated with increasing energy. This can only 
 be done (i) by preventing the spread of literature of a 
 seditious tendency, (2) by forbidding public meetings at 
 which incendiary speeches, are made. The business of 
 statesmen is to foresee impending evils and to avert them. 
 They have to prevent the massacre of their countrymen 
 and the ruin of India, however unable public opinion may 
 be to understand the necessity of their measures. 
 
 2. On raising the age of competition for the Civil 
 Service. — I think we made a fatal mistake in reducing, 
 within recent years, the age of competition for the Indian 
 Civil Service. On two accounts is it prejudicial to bring 
 out youths instead of men. In the first place, we do 
 not get men of anything like so high an average of ability 
 as we should if the maximum age were 24 instead of 19. A 
 tract was written some years ago by Mr. Oscar Browning, 
 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Lecturer on His- 
 tory in the University of Cambridge, prophecying danger for 
 the Indian Empire from the fact that the young men prepar- 
 ing at Cambridge for the Indian Civil Service were, as a rule, 
 far from being in the front rank of University students. 
 And yet there is no doubt that many of the best Univer- 
 sity men would gladly accept posts in the Indian Civil 
 Service if they had the chance of doing so after taking 
 
( " ) 
 
 their degrees. Fellows of Colleges and the most bril- 
 liant students compete for posts in the Home Civil Service, 
 posts carrying not .one-half the pay, nor one-twentieth 
 the political influence of those in the Indian Civil Ser- 
 vice, nor offering to ambition those glorious positions 
 of autocratic rulership over Provinces as large and as 
 populous as the United Kingdom. The reason why 
 these men do not compete now for the Indian Civil 
 Service is that most clever boys of i6 or 17 will not 
 sacrifice a University career and the indefinite but splendid 
 prospects they imagine it opens for them, and exile them- 
 selves in a country in which they take no interest. But 
 when, after attaining high honors at the University, they 
 discover how choked are all the avenues of professional life, 
 and that their only chance of gaining a livelihood is by 
 dragging out miserable years of penury at the English bar, 
 or by accepting an obscure under-mastership, or gaining 
 a precarious income with no prospects by lecturing under the 
 University Extension scheme, or teaching some rich man's 
 son ; they would jump at a career, which not only gave them 
 a substantial, though not a lordly, income, enabling them to 
 marry the women they loved or looked forward to loving, but 
 opened out a magnificent sphere of usefulness for the man 
 of action, and an unbounded region of research for the 
 scholar. By that time their latent interest in political, 
 social, and every kind of question that delights the student, 
 would have been called forth ; and the gratification of their 
 ambition or curiosity would counteract the repugnance to 
 exile in this magnificent old country. 
 
 The second reason why it would be advantageous to 
 bring men out at a maturer age is that they would be 
 better fitted for their work when they came. It is a mis- 
 take to cut short a man's education when he has before 
 him tasks of such gigantic difficulty as fall to the Indian 
 administrator. There is a danger, which all who have 
 
( iii ) 
 
 experienced it will bear witness to, of intellectual stagnation 
 in the lonely stations in which many Anglo-Indians are 
 obliged to pass the best years of their lives ; and the best 
 way to avert this is by the prolonged active exercise of 
 the intellect in Europe before coming to India. Moreover, 
 the utmost breadth of culture is required to give men those 
 cosmopolitan instincts which are needed' for appreciating 
 the Natives of India and their civilization. Men who know 
 Europe well will not be surprised at every human failing 
 they find in the East, and suppose it has no counterpart 
 in the West. But people who have seen but little of the 
 world are apt to judge of a nation's qualities by comparing 
 the individuals they meet with their own friends, and not 
 with mankind at large. I do not believe that the young 
 men coming out in the Indian Civil Service are equal to 
 the older ones who are about to retire. If this be true 
 there can be no more melancholy foreboding for the Indian 
 Empire. The Indian Empire has been made by the Civil 
 Service : its future rests in their hands. They furnish our 
 statesmen, or their advisers. They hold power and are 
 the embodiment of the British name in every corner of the 
 continent. Measures of reform emanate from them. No- 
 thing can be done without them ; everything with them. 
 To give us her best sons is the supreme duty that England 
 owes India. 
 
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