ASIA 
 
 iTHE CAUSES 
 
 OF PRESENT 
 
 DISCONTENTS 
 
 IN INDIA 
 
 By 
 C. J. O'DONNELL. M. P. 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 

 Cornelt University Library 
 DS 480.026 
 
 The causes o< present discontent in Indi 
 
 3 1924 021 024 058 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis bool< is in 
 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/cu31924021024058 
 
THE CAUSES OF PRESENT DISCONTENTS 
 
 IN INDIA 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE FAILURE OF LORD CURZON 
 
 Third Edition 
 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Opixxlous of like Pveas. 
 
 (i.) The Speaker. — " The writer's statements are concise, his 
 style bright and racy, and those who do not desire to 
 live in a fool's paradise should read his vigorous ex- 
 position of the methods by which the fabric of our 
 Indian Empire is being undermined." 
 
 (ii.) The Contemporary Review. — "There is no lack of 
 knowledge in this uncompromising indictment. . . . 
 Whether we agree with the author or not, his book 
 is worth reading as an exposition of an honest though 
 unpopular view of Indian administration, written by one 
 who has given the greater part of his life to the work." 
 
 (iii.) The ATHENiEUM. — "A healthy counterstroke to official 
 optimism. . . . The whole book should be read by all 
 interested in Indian administration." 
 
 (iv.) Morning Post. — "A rattling attack on the self-confident 
 young Statesman." 
 
 (v.) Vanity Fair. — " On the question of taxation, the writer 
 states a case ably and strongly." 
 
 (vi.) Liverpool Post. — "A trenchant yet courteous criticism." 
 
 (vii.) Liberty Review. — " The array of facts and the opinions 
 of distinguished statesmen and administrators, col- 
 lected in the book, forcibly arrest one's attention." 
 
 (viii.) Morning Advertiser. — " Deserves to be read carefully. 
 It is written in a moderate, reasonable way." 
 
 LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN. 
 
THE CAUSES OF PRESENT 
 DISCONTENTS IN INDIA 
 
 BY 
 
 C. J. Q'DONNELL, M.P. 
 
 "So far as the unrest arose from grievances let them be 
 sifted and removed. . . . This (the present system) was the 
 obsolete hugger-mugger method." — Lord Curzon's speech 
 of July 24, 1907. 
 
 " He is a bad citizen who gives cause for discontent, but 
 he is a worse one who stifles inquiry." — Burke. 
 
 " Until this wretched movement began it was extraordinary 
 how amicable the relations between them (the educated class 
 of Bengalis) and the Europeans had become. The spirit of 
 friendliness was growing and its trend was towards that happy 
 sympathy which should, and does in many cases, exist 
 between men of different races." — The Englishman of 
 Calcutta, July, 1906. 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN 
 ADELPHI TERRACE. MCMVIII 
 
35 
 
 First Ifttfression January, igoS 
 
 Second Impression March, igo8 
 
 f] 9(i^^^ 
 
 (All rights reserved.) 
 
Preface 
 
 The Liberal Government is committed to a policy 
 of coercion in India, and it seems impossible now 
 to repress crime and maintain order by 
 any other means. The misfortune is that 
 since the Liberal Party has come into power every 
 opportunity of adopting conciliatory methods has been 
 rejected. There is, however, still time to strengthen 
 the hands of the moderate and loyal section — the great 
 majority — of the Indian people, but this can be done 
 only by acceding to reasonable requests and by proving 
 that loyalty and goodwill are recognised and rewarded. 
 Otherwise the British Empire must prepare for a con- 
 flict, involving one-fifth part of the human race, which 
 cannot be contemplated without a shudder. 
 
 His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, on his 
 return from India nearly two years ago, pleaded at 
 the Mansion House for "a wider element 
 of sympathy " in Indian administration. It ^™'** ^" 
 was sympathy that enabled John Lawrence to lead 
 the Sikhs to the saving of our Indian Empire in 
 1857. It was sympathy that made Lord Roberts the 
 most successful of Indian Commanders-in-Chief. No 
 
 5 
 
Preface 
 
 one who reads the following pages can say that there 
 has been much sympathy in our recent dealings with 
 our Indian fellow-subjects. 
 
 We have given to India in many ways the best 
 government she has ever had, or, perhaps, is ever 
 
 likely to have. We have sinned badly by 
 *'^^'J[" excessive taxation on the peasantry, but 
 
 India was willing to pay a long price for 
 peace, order, and justice. That there is now dis- 
 content is entirely our own fault. Lord Curzon found 
 India loyal — friendly, even to himself. He left it the 
 moody, disturbed country we now know. Yet he is 
 not alone to blame. In a letter to the Times on the 
 1 5th of June last, the late Viceroy stated : — 
 
 "... The symptoms which have lately caused so 
 much anxiety were not apparent during the nearly seven 
 years for which I was responsible for the government 
 of India ; nor was I ever called upon to take measures 
 for the repression of sedition or the restoration of 
 order." 
 
 That is a very uncomfortable fact, the truth of 
 which an honest Liberal cannot deny. It is since 
 
 the advent of the Liberal Government to 
 ^o^iS^. power that the people of India have passed 
 
 from protest to something nearly approach- 
 ing passion. It is true that Lord Curzon himself 
 sowed the seeds of disorder, but they would never 
 have grown into the rank weeds which now hold 
 the field if the Liberal Party had eradicated them 
 by redress of grievances. The people endured much 
 at the hands of Lord Curzon, but they were patient 
 
 6 
 
Preface 
 
 and orderly. They believed that a better time was 
 coming ; but when they found that their prayers were 
 blocked by the unjust and unstatesmanlike doctrine of 
 the "settled fact" they gave way to that hopeless re- 
 sentment which in all lands drives men to the verge 
 and past the verge of passionate despair. 
 
 The slight improvement in public feeling in India 
 gives the opportunity of discussing Indian affairs 
 which has been wanting for the past two 
 years. The cry has been, " Do not say a 
 word for fear you may be aiding sedition." There 
 was, as a matter of fact, no sedition worthy of the 
 name, though grave and angry discontent was wide- 
 spread, but many estimable people believed in its 
 existence. The following passage from " A Vision 
 of India," by Mr. Sidney Low, whom Mr. Morley 
 has described as " a gentleman of proved competence 
 in political subjects," states the actual position with 
 great acumen : — 
 
 " The journey of the Prince of Wales showed clearly 
 that there is a deep and widespread attachment to the 
 Imperial House among the Indian people ; and even 
 where there is discontent with the mode of govern- 
 ment, there is no feeling against the Throne. Calcutta, 
 when the Prince of Wales visited it, was in the trough 
 of a furious agitation against the Partition of Bengal — 
 an agitation which on one occasion had caused every 
 native shop to be closed in the city as a sign of mourn- 
 ing. Yet when the Prince appeared amongst this angry 
 populace, he was received not only with cordiality, but 
 even with demonstrative enthusiasm." 
 
 It is well to bear in mind that in many countries 
 
 7 
 
Preface 
 
 this very cry of " sedition " has been found a most 
 convenient veil for bureaucratic failure. 
 
 The Partition of Bengal is the open sore in the 
 body politic of our Indian Empire. The following 
 
 chapters on the subject (V. and VI.) should 
 ™*flS.''° convince any just-minded man that a great 
 
 wrong has been done. This measure was 
 condemned from its inception — 
 
 (i) By the Bengal Civil Service, i.e., by the 
 officials charged with the administration of 
 the Province. 
 
 (ii) By the whole Press, European and Indian, 
 English and Conservative journals being 
 specially vigorous in their hostility. 
 
 (iii) By the European and Indian merchants, 
 through their respective Chambers of 
 Commerce. 
 
 (iv) By the Hindu nobility, gentry, and peasantry. 
 
 (v) By the Musalman nobility, gentry, and peas- 
 antry ; and 
 
 (vi) By the educated classes of both communities, 
 Hindu and Musalman. 
 
 The Nawab Sayyid Amir Husain, C.I.E., writing 
 on the 17th of February, 1904, as Honorary Secretary 
 of the Central Muhamadan Association — which, he 
 declared, " has its branches all over Bengal " — to the 
 Chief Secretary of the government of Bengal, stated 
 that partition was " neither necessary nor desirable," 
 and that by disrupting an ancient Province it would 
 "break the prescription of many centuries." 
 
 8 
 
Preface 
 
 In short, the Partition of Bengal was universally 
 and ruthlessly condemned. In the words of the 
 Englishman, the premier Conservative journal of 
 Calcutta — 
 
 " The Government can hardly be in very much doubt 
 as to the popularity of its proposals to dismember the 
 Province of Bengal. The proposals for partition have 
 been attacked in every key and every language. They 
 are repugnant alike to sentiment and to common sense. 
 They are opposed by every community and by every 
 section of each community. And within the threatened 
 districts themselves they have awakened a storm of 
 passionate protest which has surprised those who have 
 led it." 
 
 Although some form of territorial rearrangement 
 may be justifiable, the partition, as finally demarcated 
 by Lord Curzon, is bad in the highest degree from 
 the administrative or English standpoint, involves 
 great unnecessary expense, and from its inherent 
 unfitness cannot be final. It is now being maintained 
 through sheer foolish obstinacy. 
 
 The extraordinary unwisdom of the Executive 
 Authorities in India is shown in the censures of the 
 High Court of Calcutta and in the decision 
 of the judge who tried the Punjab riot ^^a^ 
 cases. Chapters VIII. and IX. will, the 
 author believes, be a revelation to the English 
 public, which, he has no manner of doubt, is anxious 
 to see India ruled with justice and common sense. At 
 the same time. Englishmen will feel a great pride in 
 the surpassing equity of our highest courts of law in 
 India. 
 
 9 
 
Preface 
 
 It is also necessary to show that the so-called 
 "reforms" attributed to Mr. Morley, but which are 
 really the work of the Secretaries and 
 ^eSS" others, whom Lord Curzon placed in the 
 highest offices at Simla, are hopelessly at 
 variance with the guiding principle, on which our 
 whole policy in India has been based for more than 
 a century — the firm abstention from religious partisan- 
 ship. The "reforms" frankly discriminate in favour 
 of the adherents of the Musalman faith, and, equally 
 frankly, are hostile to the educated classes, who are 
 mostly Hindu. Recent appointments to the Council 
 of the Secretary of State also prove a determination 
 in the India Office to maintain Lord Curzon's policy 
 in its most reactionary details. 
 
 The Pioneer, the leading English journal in India, 
 as recently as last October gave the following descrip- 
 tion of the Government of India at the 
 
 "A Top-beavy 
 
 Bureaucracy." present time : — 
 
 " The most perfect system of administration which 
 the world has ever seen has come to be regarded by 
 many — and an increasing number — as a top-heavy 
 bureaucratic hierarchy, Byzantine in method if not in 
 spirit, hide-bound by precedent and theory, detached 
 from practical conditions, mechanical and doctrinaire. 
 
 " One of the first necessities of the time," it continued, 
 "is to prune off Government action, to let in light and 
 shade. This will not be easy for officials struggling 
 after perfection. They will have to be baptized again ; 
 to adore what they have burnt and burn what they have 
 adored ; to look to substance, not to form ; to distinguish 
 (the most difficult thing in the world) between means 
 and ends ; to find out what the people want, not what 
 
 lo 
 
Preface 
 
 they ought to want ; to value compromise ; to meet one's 
 adversary in the way, and, above all, to leave things 
 alone." 
 
 The Author hopes that in the following pages he 
 may be able to establish to some extent the accuracy 
 of these views of Indian Government. It 
 is quite certain that he will be vilified for ^r^^ 
 criticising the Service to which he has had 
 the honour to belong, but he desires to make it quite 
 plain that, except in the last Chapter, it is not the 
 Indian Civil Service to which his criticisms apply, 
 but to the disastrous results of Lord Curzon's policy. 
 The Civil Service continues to be one of the most 
 able, honourable, and hard-working bodies of public 
 servants in the Empire, often carrying out their 
 important duties under most unhealthy and arduous 
 conditions ; but they are servants, and it is their duty 
 to give effect to any policy which the Government 
 may adopt, even though distasteful to them. Very 
 many of the more senior would welcome the success 
 of those Members of Parliament who are now seeking 
 to lead back the Government of India to the sane 
 and sympathetic methods of Lords Northbrook, 
 Lansdowne, and Elgin. 
 
 The Author, some years before he retired from 
 the Indian Civil Service, held the Commissioner- 
 ships of the Bhagulpur and Rajshahi Divisions, 
 which large administrative charges, each with a popu- 
 lation, roundly, of nine millions, have been affected 
 most injuriously by the Partition of Bengal. Seven 
 districts, included in them, with a population of about 
 ten millions, have been transferred from the Calcutta 
 
 II 
 
Preface 
 
 Lieutenant-Governorship to Eastern Bengal, and 
 careful inquiry has established the fact that in that 
 great population not a single Indian authority, 
 noble or peasant, merchant or lawyer, Municipal 
 Council or District Board was consulted in regard to 
 a change, which, they allege, injures them in nearly 
 every relation of their public and private interests. 
 Can the English people reasonably expect content- 
 ment and loyalty to accrue from "an administrative 
 operation, which," in the words of Mr. Morley, 
 " went wholly and decisively against the wishes of 
 most of the people concerned " ? 
 
 75, Queen's Gate, S.W. 
 January 25, 1908. 
 
 12 
 
Contents 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 Coercion — Sympathy — Our Own Fault — Liberal Re- 
 sponsibility — No Sedition — The Partition of Bengal 
 — Executive Unwisdom — Partisans in Religion — "A 
 Top-heavy Bureaucracy " — The Civil Service. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introduction 17 
 
 " Studious Moderation"—" Not Won by the Sword "— 
 The Failure of a Great Hope — ^A Policy of Con- 
 tempt — ^A Political Danger — Mr. Morley's Reactionary 
 Alliance — " Situation not at all Dangerous " — How to 
 Rally the Moderates — Return to Sympathetic Con- 
 servatism — Any Fair Inqtiiry — Liberal Coercion, 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 India and Parliament 26 
 
 Parliamentary Indifference — The Right of the 
 Humblest — Closure and InaccessibiUty — An Un- 
 healthy Lesson — Liberal BacksUding — The " Courage " 
 of Apathy — The Real Lesson of the Mutiny — Despair 
 in Liberalism — False to its Great Traditions — Loyal 
 and a Patriot. 
 
 13 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Council of India and Mr. Morley's Reforms . 33 
 
 " Enlightened by Non-official Experience " — Indepen- 
 dence Ousted — ^A Sympathetic Idea — ^A Merely Official 
 Hindu — An Unrepresentative Musalman — Lord 
 Curzon still Master — Reactionary " Reforms " — Their 
 Origin — The New Law-makers — Exclude Progressive 
 India — What of the Peasantry ?— Hindus free from 
 Bigotry — ^A Warning — Anti- British Musalmans — The 
 Only Wise Policy. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Lord Curzon and Educated India .... 44 
 
 The Disloyal Babu — Lord Curzon's Great Qualities — 
 Merciless War — Attacks Education — "The Greatest 
 Blessing "— " A Matter of Life or Death "—The Son 
 of the Sycophant — The Untruthfulness of Asiatics — 
 Absence of Charity — Quotations from the English 
 Press — " Worthy of Russia " — " Inward Instincts of 
 an Oligarchy "—A " Hateful Assault." 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Partition of Bengal 53 
 
 Mr. Morley Justifies Agitation — English Press Strongly 
 Condemns — " Repugnant to Every Community " — 
 " Crushing Objections " — " No Possible Advantage " — 
 Unstatesmanlike Resentment — Ad Hoc Lieutenant- 
 Governors — Bowdlerised Blue Books — Opinion of 
 High Court — " Retrograde and Mischievous " — In- 
 tense National Feeling — The Oldest Hindu Kingdom 
 — National Mourning — Mr. Morley's Condemnation — 
 Lord Curzon's Contempt for Parliament — Sir B. Fuller 
 tells the Truth— The Civil Service Hostile— The 
 Acceptable Partition — The Ethnic Frontier — An Un- 
 desirable Capital — A Misplaced Trust. 
 
 H 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Musalmans and Partition ..... 67 
 
 A Sectarian Policy — Fostering Disunion — The Sole 
 Supporter — Educated Musalmans Condemn — Musal- 
 man Peasantry Hostile — Causes of Riot — Incitements 
 of Mullahs — Official Partisans — Ill-will Unknown. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Baiting the Bengali 76 
 
 Cruelly Provoked — ^A Bishop's Warning — Warren 
 Hastings's Protest — Disgraceful Libels — ^Vituperation 
 by the Times — ^Abuse of Indian Leaders — An " In- 
 famous " Insult — The Gravest Danger of To-day — 
 The Bengali at Football. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A Real High Court of Justice 83 
 
 Even-Handed Justice— " Clearly Illegal"— Law Used 
 to Humiliate — Action for Rs.io,ooo Damages — 
 " No Greater Indignity " — Delegates Assaulted — 
 "Blundered Very Badly" — Hindu Shops Looted — 
 " Utterly Unreliable Evidence " — " Preconceived 
 Sympathies " — "A Legitimate Aspiration " — Some 
 Day the BUI. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "Sedition" in the Punjab 92 
 
 "No Alarming Features" — Mr. Morley Misled— 
 " Greed the Basis of Discontent "—The Song of the 
 Peasantry — " Ruined Beyond Redemption " — ^An Un^ 
 mixed Blessing — " The Injustice of the Measure " — 
 The Sikh Regiments— To Save its Face— A State 
 
 IS 
 
Contents 
 
 Trial and a Just Judge — ^" Improbable and Unreliable" 
 — "Untrustworthy and Malicious" — ^A Thoroughly 
 Legitimate Agitation — Entirely Against Rack-renting 
 —Truth Prevailed— No "Sedition." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Rack-Taxing in Rural India 103 
 
 One Meal a Day — Rack-Taxing by Liberals — The 
 Chief Cause of Famine — " A Damning Indictment " — 
 "The Enormous Increase of Revenue" — Eviction 
 by the Million — An Income-tax of 65 per cent. 
 Admitted — The Petition of a Chief Justice — A 
 Ridiculous Defence — ^An India Office Fable. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Decadence of Indian Administration . . .114 
 
 " A Doctrinaire Hierarchy " — The Old Haileybury 
 Service — The Competition-wallah — The Oxford of 
 Jowett — Balliol Ideals — The Secretariat System — 
 " Governments " without Training — Hurry in High 
 Places — ^The Dread of Exile. 
 
 16 
 
The Causes of 
 Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Pioneer, the very able Anglo-Indian journal, 
 which is recognised as the chief organ of Conservative 
 and Governmental opinion in India, has 
 truthfully stated that the small group of Moaeration." 
 ex-officials of the Indian Civil Service, 
 who, as members of Parliament, have attempted to 
 apply Liberal principles to Indian administration, 
 have placed their case before the House of Commons 
 " with studious moderation." Although Imperialist 
 journals in London have been less equitable in their 
 treatment of us, it is my hope that in the following 
 pages I may succeed in convincing even them that we 
 have had a good case. 
 
 Lord Curzon is a master of eloquence, and he 
 rarely put a truth in a more effective form than 
 
 17 B 
 
The Causes of 
 
 when, speaking at a dinner given by the Merchant 
 Taylors' Company on the 3rd of last July, he 
 declared that " the Indian Empire was the 
 ' tt!e*sword."^ greatest achievement, not of warfare, be- 
 cause we did not win the greater part of 
 India by the sword, but of the science of civil govern- 
 ment, which the history of the world can show," India 
 was never won by the sword, but what is infinitely 
 more important, it can never be held by the sword. In 
 the pregnant words of the historian of the Mutiny, 
 Mr. G. W. Forrest, CLE., in the Fortnightly 
 Review of last August, so vast is the population we 
 govern "that if every ryot cast a clod of earth at 
 us our power must melt like snow under the sun." 
 At the same time there is no fact more certain than 
 that any withdrawal or weakening of British authority 
 in India would be calamitous, not only to this Empire, 
 but in an especial degree fatal to the peace and 
 progress of the peoples of India. But that is no 
 reason why Englishmen should refuse to listen to 
 well-founded complaints or should reject the loyally 
 worded petitions of great populations by the crude 
 and irritating doctrine of the "settled fact." 
 
 The British Empire in India is firmly based on 
 
 a great past, which has won admiration from men 
 
 of all nations. Till within very recent 
 
 The Failure . . t 
 
 ofaoreat years it might reasonably have been hoped 
 that it would develop along the lines of 
 a broad civilisation. A succession of wise viceroys, 
 from Lord Lawrence to Lords Dufferin, Lansdowne, 
 and Elgin, had further strengthened the edifice by 
 tactful and sympathetic methods. The greatest of 
 
 18 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 their services to India was the expansion and im- 
 provement of educational facilities, under the stimulus 
 of which a great educated class has grown up, 
 probably the most cultured body of non-European 
 origin in the world. Unfortunately, a time came 
 when an inexperienced Viceroy thought fit to view 
 this class, the highest product of our wisdom, with 
 distrust and dislike. It is to Lord Curzon's system 
 of policing education, of making the University the 
 servant of the bureaucracy, and of curbing the grow- 
 ing influence of the educated class in India that we 
 chiefly owe the present unrest. As I will afterwards 
 show, the so-called reforms attributed to Mr. Morley, 
 but which are really the work of the able and 
 reactionary officials, whom Lord Curzon placed in 
 authority in India, are a thinly disguised continuation 
 of this policy. 
 
 It is manifest to any one who knows India, that 
 Mr. Morley is absolutely right on two points : first, 
 that, although Indians must be allowed a 
 greatly increased influence in Indian affairs, c^'emptf 
 representative government, as we under- 
 stand it in England, is at present impossible ; and, 
 secondly, that the British Government in India is 
 bound by its highest duty to adopt the most strenuous 
 measures, to use all the forces of the Crown, to 
 maintain order in that Empire. But, whilst recog- 
 nising that a quasi-autocratic form of administration 
 is at the present time the only one practicable, it 
 is supremely necessary that the Government should 
 be as little bureaucratic and as sensitive to Indian 
 opinion as may be. The reverse is now unquestion- 
 
 19 
 
The Causes of 
 
 ably the fact. For several years back and at the 
 present time the Government of India is ultra- 
 bureaucratic, and absolutely ignores the wishes and 
 opinions of the people of the country. In every- 
 thing Lord Curzon's policy was to treat them with 
 a persistent contempt. A single little incident will 
 elucidate the working of his system. Twenty-five of 
 the fifty members of the Calcutta Municipal Council 
 are elected, and include many Indians of wealth, good 
 family and prominent position. It has recently been 
 proposed to break up this great city into a number 
 of self-governing boroughs — a very mischievous 
 scheme, which I will not here discuss. I would 
 only beg consideration of the full meaning of the 
 following almost incredible fact, as recorded in the 
 Englishman, the leading British journal of the Indian 
 metropolis : — 
 
 " Not a single elected Commissioner of the Calcutta Muni- 
 cipality has been appointed; to a seat on the Committee, which 
 is to draw up a scheme for the decentralisation of the 
 administration of Calcutta." 
 
 When the question of the Partition of Bengal first 
 
 came before Parliament, five ex-civil servants of great 
 
 Indian experience stood up, one after the 
 
 VS^ other, to warn Mr. Morley that this 
 
 measure was so offensive to the Bengali 
 
 people that it was a political danger to persevere 
 
 in it. They were Sir Henry Cotton, K.C.S.I., lately 
 
 Chief Secretary of Bengal and Chief Commissioner of 
 
 Assam; Mr. Donald Smeaton, C.S.I., lately member 
 
 of the Viceroy's Legislative Council; Sir John Jardine, 
 
 20 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 K.C.I.E., lately Chief Secretary to the Government 
 of Bombay ; Mr. Hart Davies, a distinguished Bombay 
 officer ; and Mr. C. J. O'Donnell, lately Commissioner 
 of the Divisions of Bengal which nave suffered most 
 from partition. Mr. Rees, C.I.E., a retired Madras 
 official, who has recently made himself notorious by 
 hostility to educated Indians, said : " He realised that 
 there was a strong public feeling in Bengal against 
 partition, expressed in a legitimate manner in the 
 Press and at public meetings, and also admitted that 
 the Chamber of Commerce of Calcutta was opposed 
 to the measure," this Chamber being the most in- 
 fluential body of Europeans in India. Mr. Morley 
 turned a deaf ear to these warnings. 
 
 The Secretary of State, at Arbroath, was hardly 
 just to himself when he spoke of " ex- Indians," whose 
 criticisms of Indian affairs were "too often 
 
 Mr, Motley's 
 
 coloured by personal partisanship," "men Reactionary 
 who, having acquired the habit of writing 
 whilst they were in the Government, unluckily retain 
 the habit after they come home and live, or ought 
 to live, in peace and quietness amongst their friends 
 here." Had they been Conservatives like Sir 
 Walter Lawrence, Lord Curzon's Private Secretary, 
 whom Mr. Morley has just appointed to the Council 
 of the Secretary of State, their advice would be 
 valuable and a thing to be sought for, but, being the 
 elected representatives of great Liberal constituencies, 
 they should retire to obscurity and hold their tongues. 
 In this fact lies the secret of Mr. Morley's difficulties 
 in Indian administration. He has disregarded the 
 advice and the authority of every one but Ultra- 
 
 21 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Conservatives. The intimacy of the present alliance 
 of the India Office with the Jingoist section of 
 the Conservative Party is proved by its sanctioning 
 the appointment of Mr. Everard Cotes, the Simla 
 correspondent of the Daily Mail, on a salary of 
 ;^i,20o a year to supply information, nominally to 
 officials but really to the English Press. 
 
 The most accurate statement made by Mr. Morley 
 .,«.. .. in his address to his constituents on the 
 
 "Situation 
 
 notatau 2 1 St October, at Arbroath, was this — 
 
 Dangerous." 
 
 " You will want to know " he said, " how the situation is 
 viewed at this moment in India itself by those who are re- 
 sponsible for the Government of India. I think it is best to 
 be quite straightforward, and the view is not a new view at all. 
 The view is that the situation is not at all dangerous, but that 
 it requires serious and urgent attention. That seems to be 
 the verdict, for the moment it is the verdict. Those who are 
 called Extremists are few, but they are active, their field is wide, 
 and their nets are far spread. Anybody who has read history 
 knows that the Extremist beats the Moderate by his fire, his fiery 
 energy, his very narrowness and concentration. So be it ; we 
 remember it ; and we watch it all, with that lesson of historic 
 experience full in our minds. But still we hold that it would be 
 the height of political folly for us at this moment to refuse to do 
 all we can do to rally the Moderates to the cause of the Govern- 
 ment, simply because the policy will not satisfy the Extremists. 
 Let us, if we can, rally the Moderates, and, if we are told that 
 the policy will not satisfy the Extremists, so be it ; our line will 
 remain the same. There is a great lessonj a great principle, 
 a great maxim. It is the height of folly to refuse to rally 
 Moderates, and what we shall call sensible people, because we 
 will not satisfy Extremists." (Cheers.) 
 
 This admirable passage is the old Liberal faith 
 of the Secretary of State coming to the top. The 
 sole question, indeed, is how should we rally the 
 
 22 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Moderates — the immense majority of the Indian 
 people' — to the side of Government ? The answer is 
 very simple and lies at the root of all 
 Liberalism. " Inquire into their grievances Raiiy th« 
 
 «•!■•« I'l Moderates. 
 
 and let the mquiry be open and mdepen- 
 dent." Mr. Morley is, however, so occupied with the 
 Extremists — the small minority — that he has no time 
 to think or even mention the reasonable demands, 
 which the Moderates, such as the nobility, landlords, 
 and gentry of Bengal, have persistently made in the 
 most loyal language for three years back. All one's 
 sympathies are and should be with Mr. Morley, but 
 it is perfectly evident that the gentlemen, who feared 
 that a Liberal Secretary of State might interfere 
 with their autocracy, have laboured hard to convince 
 him that India is on the brink of insurrection, that 
 mutiny is at our doors, and the massacre of Europeans 
 an early probability. Reuter's agents, the Times , 
 and the Daily Mail have filled in the details of the 
 harrowing picture. 
 
 In Parliament also the request of the Anglo-Indian 
 group is nothing very terrifying. To put it in a few 
 words, we have asked that Indian adminis- „ ^ ^ 
 
 Betum to 
 
 tration should be, at least, replaced m the sjrmpatiietic 
 
 ,. . I'lTiT 1 1 ConservatlsiB 
 
 position in which Lord Lansdowne and 
 Lord Elgin left it — conservative, no doubt, bureau- 
 cratic, if you will, but just and even sympathetic, ever 
 ready to listen to grievances and free from coercive 
 methods. 
 
 Mr. Morley asked his audience : " Does anybody 
 want me to go to London to-morrow morning and to 
 send a telegram to Lord Kitchener, who is Com- 
 
 23 
 
The Causes of 
 
 mander-in-Chief in India, and tell him that he is to 
 disband the native army and send home, as fast as we 
 
 can dispatch transports, the British contin- 
 ^«i^ gent of the Army, and bring away the whole 
 
 of the Civil servants ? " No. Nobody, not 
 even the wildest Extremist, ever made such a request, 
 but every native of India, certainly of Eastern India, 
 all the educated Indians of the Empire, ask for a 
 full inquiry into the Partition of Bengal, say, by 
 three judges of the High Court of Justice of England 
 or even by a Committee of the House of Lords. 
 Their case is so invincible that they would welcome 
 any open investigation. All India, especially Western 
 India, prays, and prays humbly, that an independent 
 inquiry should be made into the taxation of the land, 
 an inquiry refused by Lord Curzon. I unhesitatingly 
 ask. Would these acts of justice lead to sedition, or 
 even to discontent ? but Mr. Morley, to use his own 
 words, can only "hear through the dark distances 
 the roar and scream of confusion and carnage in 
 India." He has been listening too much to the wily 
 persons, who seek to frighten him by blood-curdling 
 fables from doing what every Liberal believes he is 
 anxious to do. Yet, as I have noted above, towards 
 the middle of his speech the Secretary of State 
 recognises the real fact that the " Extremists are few," 
 and " the situation is not at all dangerous," 
 
 India has had for many years a very severe Press 
 
 law. Lord Curzon, by his Official Secrets 
 toen^ Act, made it in some ways the most drastic 
 
 in the world. The new Coercion Act 
 passed last November at Simla is as severe as any in 
 
 24 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Europe. It practically kills the right of public 
 meeting, which in a country without representative 
 institutions is the only means of making known the 
 grievances of a subject people. Mr. Morley is 
 responsible for this law, and I do not question its 
 necessity in order to control the passions which his 
 policy of " the settled fact " have engendered. But 
 there is one provision of this new legislation which 
 is singularly dangerous. I refer to the system of 
 espionage and oppression involved in giving a 
 notoriously corrupt police the power of the domiciliary 
 visit. The Englishman's house is his castle. To an 
 Indian it is the temple of his honour. In a country 
 where the seclusion of women prevails, trespass 
 means bloodshed. Every Indian member of the 
 Legislative Council protested most vigorously against 
 this provision, but it was carried unanimously by a 
 docile official majority. 
 
 25 
 
The Causes of 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 INDIA AND PARLIAMENT 
 
 " In subjecting details of Indian Administration to 
 the supervision and criticism of this House, the Indian 
 Government would be exposed to the kind of criticism 
 which would do no good but harm." — Mr. Morley's 
 BuDGEt Speech, 1906. 
 
 It has been foretold that India will be lost on the 
 
 floor of the House of Commons. Often during the 
 
 past two years this prophecy has recurred 
 
 mentary to my mind, and I have no doubt but 
 
 Indifference. , , , . .^ . , , 
 
 that such a calamity, if it ever does happen, 
 will be due not to parliamentary interference but to 
 an unpatriotic apathy that refuses to take the trouble 
 to understand Indian questions. 
 
 The sheet anchor of British dominion in India has 
 
 always been a well-founded belief in the justice of 
 
 _^ „. ^, our administration. India is peculiarly a 
 
 The Eight , ^ ■' 
 
 of the country in which such a belief super- 
 sedes almost all other advantages of good 
 government. The right of even the humblest pea- 
 sant to approach the governing power by way of 
 petition and appeal is ingrained into the Indian 
 character. Under native sovereigns it has always 
 been the practice to permit any and every petitioner 
 
 26 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 to approach in open durbar and seek for redress. 
 The refusal to grant this access and to listen to 
 petitions has been regarded in India for centuries 
 as the worst of governmental faults. This is exactly 
 what an Ultra- Liberal Parliament has done during 
 the past two years. 
 
 Every obstacle has been placed in the way of 
 discussion of Indian questions. Even the closure 
 was moved by the Secretary of State when 
 the consideration of the Partition of Bengal maccessi- 
 was of all matters the most urgent, and in *"^*^' 
 neither of the great speeches he has made on the 
 Indian Budget has he deigned to devote one sentence 
 to mitigate the storm of resentment that ill-omened 
 measure has aroused. When asked if he would 
 receive a deputation of the nobility, gentry, lawyers 
 and merchants of Bengal to state their various 
 grievances under the Partition, he blankly refused. 
 History will record that the subsequent discontent in 
 Bengal was almost entirely due to this attitude of a 
 Liberal Administration. 
 
 On the 6th of last July the Strangers' Gallery of 
 the House of Commons was crowded with an unusual 
 audience. Englishmen were almost absent, 
 but Indians, mostly young men, abounded, uniieaatiiy 
 They were students who had come from the 
 Far East to study, in our universities and schools of 
 law and medicine, the science of the West. They 
 were just then getting a lesson in the politics of the 
 West, and it was not a very healthy one. The House 
 itself was also crowded whilst the Secretary of State 
 gave his Budget address, which was mostly a philippic 
 
 27 
 
The Causes of 
 
 against discontent and a defence of coercion. He 
 closed his speech and the House quickly dispersed, 
 whilst a few Liberals tried amongst empty benches to 
 invite its members to adopt the following amendment, 
 moved by Mr. G. A. Hardy, M.P, for the Stowmarket 
 Division : — 
 
 "That, whilst affirming the imperative necessity of 
 maintaining peace and order in India, this House is 
 of opinion that an inquiry by means of a Parliamentary 
 Committee or Royal Commission should be instituted 
 into the causes at the root of the dissatisfaction." 
 
 The debate dragged its weary way along till after 
 ten o'clock, when the House, having heard nothing 
 
 of the arguments and seemingly caring less, 
 Ba^uSig. assembled again. For hours the front 
 
 benches on both sides of the House had 
 
 been absolutely empty, but for a stray Under-Secretary. 
 
 As eleven o'clock approached the House was filled 
 
 with honourable members, mostly summoned by the 
 
 Liberal Whips, ready to reject the reasonable request 
 
 that Indian grievances should be inquired into by 
 
 some independent authority. The last speaker — 
 
 wisely, I submit — talked out the debate, and saved 
 
 his Party from the indiscretion of such an illiberal 
 
 decision. 
 
 Mr. Morley, speaking at Arbroath on the 22nd of 
 
 ^ „ October last, took a very different view of 
 
 TUe courage ' ' 
 
 ofApatty. this scene, and stated that — 
 
 "it is impossible to overrate the courage, the patience, and 
 fidelity with which the present House of Commons has faced 
 a not at all easy moment in Indian Government," adding " I do 
 
 28 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 augur from the proceedings of the last Session that democracy, 
 in this case at all events, has shown, and I think is going to 
 show, its capacity for facing these enormously difificult and com- 
 plicated problems." 
 
 If a Conservative had used such language it would be 
 clear that he was poking cynical fun at his opponents. 
 The policy of Parliamentary apathy and inaction has 
 found an eloquent exponent, whilst democracy, if 
 democracy is really represented in the Liberal Party, 
 has refused to face the problems of India, and its 
 courage has been that of the ostrich that hides its 
 head in the sands. 
 
 Are these problems really so difficult and so com- 
 plicated ? For a century and a half England has 
 administered India with ease and with 
 astonishmg success. But for the terrible Lesson of the 
 mischance of the Mutiny, every territory, " "'^' 
 as it passed under our dominion, has willingly 
 settled down to obedience and content, Bengal 
 showing an exemplary docility. This is not the 
 place to discuss the circumstances of the great 
 calamity of 1857, but this I will say, that the 
 failure of the Sepoy Army to break our power 
 was due to the loyalty of the civil population and 
 especially to the goodwill of the two bodies that have 
 recently shown marked discontent — -I mean the Sikh 
 population of the Punjab and the educated classes 
 throughout India, especially in Bengal. Still it may 
 be well to call to mind that the Mutiny was entirely 
 due to preventible causes, and that if the grievances 
 of the Indian soldiers had been inquired into" with 
 sympathy or even intelligence, the black shadow that 
 
 29 
 
The Causes of 
 
 still rests between the peoples of England and India 
 would never have been cast across our path of Empire. 
 Lord Roberts, Sir Evelyn Wood, and other great 
 military authorities, who have studied the question, 
 admit that the Sepoys had "sound reason " for fearing 
 injury to their religions as Hindus and Musalmans. 
 Mr. W. H. Lecky, the greatest of English historians 
 in the last century, after a thorough investigation, has 
 stated : " This is a shameful and terrible fact, and if 
 mutiny was ever justifiable, no stronger justification 
 could be given than that of the Sepoy troops." 
 
 I ask, then, is it wise, is it just that a Liberal 
 House of Commons should absolutely refuse to give 
 
 a fair hearing to great national and eco- 
 lSSs^ nomic grievances at the present day? Does 
 
 any member of the House of Commons 
 reflect with what feelings that large body of educated 
 young Indians, who watched the debate from the 
 gallery of the House of Commons on July 6th, must 
 have viewed the backsliding of the Liberal Party on 
 that occasion ? The effect in India of its action may 
 be judged from the following extract from the 
 Bengali, the leading Indian journal of Calcutta, a 
 few days later : — 
 
 " We have come to the conclusion, and even sceptics have 
 been converted to the view, that the principles of Liberalism 
 are not meant for India, and that to us it is immaterial whether 
 Liberals or Conservatives are in power. There is but one party 
 which governs India — in which all distinctions between Liberals 
 and Conservatives and Unionists are merged — it is the party of 
 reaction, the party of prestige and of ' settled facts ' — the party 
 which vrill not reconsider a mistake, admitted as such, on the 
 ground that it is a settled fact, and which will not hesitate to set 
 
 30 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 at naught the elementary principles of justice, and in the name 
 of State-emergency to trample underfoot one of the most 
 sacred of personal rights, the right of the subject to be heard 
 before he is condemned. The disillusionment has come. We 
 have to recast our estimate of English politics and of English 
 public men. The shock is great. It cannot fail to breed an 
 atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion, and create misgivings in 
 the public mind even with regard to the measures of Govern- 
 ment, initiated with the best of motives. To-day," it continued, 
 " we stand in the unhappy position of having lost all faith in 
 both the political parties in England. If Mr. Morley can act so, 
 what may we not expect of others, of men who have never 
 cared for principles in politics and who have made office the 
 aim of their ambition ? This is the one sentiment which is now 
 uppermost in our minds. It is a great wrench when old- 
 standing and long-cherished ideals are torn from their roots 
 and cast aside as images of clay. But to-day this is the mental 
 attitude of the educated class throughout India. They have lost 
 all faith in the Liberal Party." 
 
 This is certainly not the language of an incendiary. 
 No graver injury to English prestige, to English 
 authority, is possible than the refusal of 
 
 , T-i'iT»i- 1 • falsB to its 
 
 the English rarhament to do its most great 
 elementary duty. God has placed three * ^°^' 
 hundred millions of human beings under our do- 
 minion and the House of Commons is false to 
 its great traditions, false to England too, so long as 
 it hands over that vast population, without supervision 
 or criticism, to a group of temporary officials, however 
 able, however honourable, but possibly impolitic and 
 unwise. 
 
 The Bengali is edited by the Honourable Surendra- 
 nath Banerjea. I still give him the title of " honour- 
 able," for he bore it for many years as a member of 
 the Legislative Council of Bengal, which important 
 
 31 
 
The Causes of 
 
 office he held both by appointment at the hands of 
 successive Lieutenant-Governors and as the elected 
 
 representative of his people. He is an 
 ^ftUri^t! °^^ "lan, well over sixty years of age, 
 
 whose journal has always warmly recog- 
 nised the benefits his country has received from 
 British rule. He has made his mistakes, but what 
 leader of a great and just agitation, in which national 
 and race questions are involved, but has erred in a 
 similar fashion, at least in the eyes of his opponents ? 
 As lately as October i6, 1906, the Times admitted 
 that Mr. Surendranath " has hitherto been reckoned 
 amongst the Moderates." At the present moment he 
 is captaining the Moderate Party against the foolish 
 violence of the disloyal. He is held in the highest 
 esteem by Bengalis of every class and by many 
 Englishmen, but he has been the victim of silly 
 misrepresentation. He is a religious man, and when 
 he began his struggle against Partition his brother 
 Brahmans performed a religious ceremony similar to 
 the blessing that Christians invoke when they enter 
 on any arduous undertaking. It included, as many 
 Hindu rites do, the use of a chaplet of flowers, and 
 this simple act was described, even in the House of 
 Commons, as a kind of coronation ! India has no 
 son more worthy of the respect of every consistent 
 Liberal than this sincere patriot and loyal subject of 
 the King-Emperor. His chief sin is that he has 
 asked for justice from the House of Commons in 
 regard to the Partition of Bengal, and for that 
 " supervision and criticism " which a Liberal 
 Governmeftt ought to exercise. 
 
 32 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF INDIA AND MR. MORLEY'S 
 REFORMS 
 
 "In providing that laws for India should be passed 
 at a Council consisting not only of the ordinary 
 members of the Executive Government but 
 of additional members specially added for Enlightened 
 the purpose (of v(^hom some have always ''Bxperienc^^ 
 been unofficial), it was the clear intention of 
 Parliament that in the task of legislation the Government 
 should, in addition to the sources of information usually 
 open to it, be enlightened by the advice and knowledge 
 of persons posessing other than official experience. Of 
 these you were unfortunately deprived in discussing a 
 subject in respect to which the assistance of non-official 
 Councillors is of special value." — Lord Salisbury, in 1875, 
 being then Secretary of State for India. 
 
 The original idea of Parliament in 1858, when it 
 passed the Council of India Act, was that seven 
 of its fifteen members should be non-ofificial. It pre- 
 served this character for many years, but 
 has steadily become more and more official, ""'oug^™*® 
 Recent appointments, which are described 
 on the following page, have not given it a more 
 independent character. Only two members, and they, 
 it will be observed, the most distinguished in the 
 
 33 c 
 
The Causes of 
 
 body — Sir James L. Mackay, the Commercial Member, 
 probably the greatest living authority on British 
 trade in Asia, and the Financial Member, Sir Felix 
 Schuster, a leading banker of the city of London — 
 can be regarded as really non-official. The passage 
 at the top of this chapter shows what an eminent 
 Conservative statesman thought of the growing 
 tendency in India to oust non-official members from 
 the position of influence they should hold in legisla- 
 tion. The decrease of the non-official element in the 
 Council of the Secretary of State is quite as injurious 
 to good administration. In spite of Lord Salisbury's 
 protest, it is still the constant practice to pass most 
 important legislation at Simla, two or three days' 
 journey away from Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and 
 the other chief towns where the non-official members 
 reside. The legislation legalising the Partition of 
 Bengal was passed at the Himalayan capital of the 
 Viceroy, not one non-official member being present, 
 whilst only a couple of months ago the great Coercion 
 Enactment, known as the Seditious Meetings Act, 
 similarly became law at Simla, only three non-official 
 members having undertaken the long journey in 
 order to record their votes against it. I wonder if 
 the present Liberal Secretary of State has protested, 
 as his great Conservative predecessor did, against 
 reducing non-official representation to a comedy. 
 It was a just and liberal and sympathetic idea on 
 Mr. Morley's part to introduce natives of 
 theS??d^. I"dia into his Council. When the Bill en- 
 abling him to do so was before Parliament 
 at a midnight sitting in August, some members of 
 
 34 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 the Indian group endeavoured to introduce provisions 
 to ensure that the gentlemen so appointed should 
 be really representative of Indian opinion. The 
 Secretary of State, however, rejected the advice, 
 although his experience at the Irish Office might have 
 reminded him that many gentlemen of pure Irish 
 parentage and of the religion of the people are at 
 the present day in no way representative of Irish 
 opinion. Indeed, Irish Catholic officials have often 
 been the most anti- Irish of the governing class. A 
 similar fact is possible in India. 
 
 The two Indians that Mr. Morley has appointed 
 to his Council are, I would venture to say, the least 
 representative men he could find in the 
 length and breadth of the Indian Empire. official 
 Mr. K. G. Gupta is the one Bengali Hindu 
 of education who strongly supported Lord Curzon 
 in his Partition of Bengal and is unpopular with 
 the Hindus, whom, he is supposed to represent. He 
 has always been recognised as a very able public 
 servant and has risen to high office, but he has 
 never shown any independent appreciation of Indian 
 questions. An official of officials, he represents 
 nobody but the Government which he has served 
 so faithfully. 
 
 The new Musalman member of the India Council, 
 Mr. Bilgrami, is in some respects an even less satis- 
 factory appointment. He has been for . „ 
 
 J rr ^ ^ An Vnrepre- 
 
 over thirty years an unimportant official sentative 
 in the service of the Nizam of Haidarabad, 
 and is not a representative of British India at all, 
 but found favour with Lord Curzon as the only 
 
 35 
 
The Causes of 
 
 native of India who supported him in his assault 
 on the educated class by his University Commission 
 which, as we know from the Qnarterly Review, 
 " shook Babudom [Educated Hindu India] to its very 
 foundations." The Musalmans of India generally 
 live on terms of much kindliness with their Hindu 
 neighbours, but there is a small clique, mostly of 
 non- Indian descent, with its headquarters at Aligurh 
 College, which of recent years has become actively 
 hostile to Hindu progress. It has been compared 
 to the Orange Society in Ireland, but is far less 
 aggressive. Mr. Bilgrami has been regarded — possibly 
 unjustly — as a leading spirit in this anti- Hindu coterie. 
 There were, however, many far more distinguished 
 Musalmans whom Mr. Morley might have chosen, 
 such as Mr. Amir AH, C.S.I., ex-Judge of the Calcutta 
 High Court, or the Hon. Nawab Sayyid Muhamad, 
 at present a member of the Viceroy's Legislative 
 Council, both very able, broad-minded men. There 
 are dozens of other Musalmans of culture and great 
 position who would have been acceptable to Indians 
 of all religions. 
 
 Mr. Morley's third and last appointment to his 
 Council is Sir Walter Lawrence who, as ex-private 
 
 secretary to Lord Curzon and his most 
 stm*MMter intimate friend, may be said to represent 
 
 the Curzonian tradition in its entirety. No 
 one of these three gentlemen has in the smallest 
 degree the confidence of the Indian people. Indeed, 
 quite the reverse. There is no question of the great 
 ability and high character of Sir Walter Lawrence, 
 and his bonhomie did very much to smooth over 
 
 36 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 the asperities of the late Viceroy, but his appointment 
 has convinced the Indian public that finally and 
 definitely the maintenance of Lord Curzon's regime 
 continues the policy of the India Office and has now 
 become the policy of its Liberal Secretary of State. 
 There is no blinking the fact. Every grievance that 
 the Indian people complained of during the seven 
 years of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty is still in full 
 force. Not one has been redressed, and Mr. Morley 
 has chosen as his advisers men who are certain to 
 use all their influence to work out the Curzon pro- 
 gramme. The Liberal Government is in effect Lord 
 Curzon's Executor. 
 
 Turning now to the so-called reforms, which Mr. 
 Morley assured the House of Commons were of a 
 really Liberal character, they display three 
 leading characteristics : "R^fomS!^ 
 
 (i) They diminish what little influence 
 educated Indians had already obtained in the legisla- 
 tion of their country. 
 
 (ii) They secure to the large landlords or magnates, 
 titled and untitled, predominance amongst Indian 
 representatives ; and 
 
 (iii) They give special favour to Mus^ian interests. 
 
 As to the origin of these " reforms," uis interesting 
 to learn that last summer Lord Minto sent their 
 reputed author, his Secretary in the Home 
 
 _. . . 1 T 1- Their Origin. 
 
 Department, on a mission to the India 
 
 Office. Sir Herbert Risley was for some years Lord 
 
 Curzon's right-hand man and seemingly his guide in 
 
 the latter part of his viceroyalty. He was certainly 
 
 the moving spirit in bringing about the Partition 
 
 37 
 
The Causes of 
 
 of Bengal, Lord Curzon's culminating error. The 
 Hindus now believe that Sir Herbert Risley is also 
 the author of the new pro-Musalman policy, which, 
 if persevered in, will infallibly bring trouble to Lord 
 Minto's administration. 
 
 The new constitution of the Viceroy's Legislative 
 
 Council, as proposed in the recent minute 
 
 law-makere. of the Government of India, is as follows : 
 
 A. Ex-officio, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal (or of 
 the Punjab when the Council assembles in Simla), the 
 Commander-in-Chief, and the Members of the Execu- 
 tive Council 8 
 
 B. Additional officials to be nominated, not exceeding 20 
 
 C. A Ruling Chief to be nominated by the Viceroy i 
 
 D. Elected members : — 
 
 (a) By the Chambers of Commerce of Calcutta and 
 Bombay 2 
 
 (b) By the non-official members of the Provincial 
 Councils of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, Eastern 
 Bengal and Assam, the United Provinces, the 
 Punjab and Burma 7 
 
 (c) By the nobles and the great landowners of Madras, 
 Bombay, Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam, the 
 United Provinces, the Punjab, and the Central 
 Provinces ; 7 
 
 {d) By Muhamadans 2 
 
 E. Non-officials nominated by the Viceroy to represent 
 minorities or special interests, not less than two to be 
 Muhamadans 4 
 
 F. Experts to be nominated by the Viceroy, when 
 necessary, for special purposes 2 
 
 Total, including His Excellency the Viceroy... 54 
 
 Sir Harvey Adamson, the Home Member of 
 Council, echoing Mr. Morley's description of it in 
 the House of Commons, claims for this rearranged 
 
 38 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 body the character of " a large and generous scheme 
 of reform." As a matter of fact it is a scheme 
 which can easily be used to block reform 
 and, in reality, ousts progressive India from progreBBive 
 effective influence in the field of legisla- 
 tion. When first developed by Mr. Morley in his 
 Budget' speech, Reuter's agent in Calcutta, with an 
 ever-ready desire to make things pleasant, telegraphed 
 that the native Press described it as "farcical." The 
 statement was untrue. Educated Indians immediately 
 recognised the great ability of the "scheme," and 
 that it might be a very destructive weapon against 
 themselves. In their opinion — I merely record the 
 fact, without endorsing it — its object, as the Indian 
 Review acutely puts the argument, is to handicap 
 " the only people prepared by education to meet 
 their astute rulers on equal terms." This very 
 capable periodical is for the most part written by 
 graduates of the English Universities — certain M.A.'s 
 of Oxford being prominent contributors — and its 
 description of the "great Liberal reforms brought 
 forward by a great Liberal statesman," though not 
 quite fair, deserves serious consideration. 
 
 " The whole," it declared, " is devised with a view — 
 
 " (i) To exclude, as far as possible, men who have the know- 
 ledge and independence of the present custodians of Indian 
 interests on the Legislative Council. 
 
 " (ii) To create a Council with a large majority consisting of 
 half-educated land magnates, whose insecurity of title will make 
 them hang upon the lips of the ofi&cial world ; and 
 
 "(iii) Of Muhamadans, who will take delight in the sense 
 of having crushed the educated Hindu in the fight for 
 constitutional freedom." 
 
 39 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Of the fifty-four members only seven, D(^), 
 "elected by the non-official members of the Pro- 
 vincial Councils," or one-eighth part of the 
 ^Baafay'? Viceroy's Council, can by any possibility 
 represent the educated class, which alone 
 has the experience and training that can fit men for 
 political life and its highly intellectual contests. The 
 " additional officials " (B) are three times more 
 numerous, and educated India asks. Is this the first 
 great Liberal Reform? The Government of India 
 is the greatest landlord in Asia, and a hard one. It 
 is to be helped by eight great landed magnates, 
 including a " Ruling Chief." Who is to represent 
 the two hundred millions of tenantry and peasants, 
 who to protect them against rack-renting and rack- 
 taxing? Is this the second great Liberal Reform? 
 
 The special membership of Muhamadans is of very 
 doubtful policy, but it might be justified, if no other 
 means existed for their representation. If 
 ^^Bigotey. the Hindu majority were bigoted and 
 refused to elect Musalmans there would 
 be great justification. But the contrary is the fact. 
 Madras, which is overwhelmingly Hindu in popula- 
 tion, is at present represented on the Viceroy's 
 Council by Nawab Sayyid Muhamad, and some 
 years ago Bombay, in which Hindus are equally 
 predominant, was represented by Mr. R. Muhamad 
 Sayani. The Hindus of Bengal confided their 
 interests to Maulvi Sirajul Islam and to Mr. Sharf- 
 uddin. All these gentlemen were on the best terms 
 with both Hindus and Musalmans, and represented 
 both. The Indian Press fears that the special Musal- 
 
 40 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 man representation has been devised in order to 
 introduce on the Council gentlemen of anti- Hindu 
 proclivities — Indian Orangemen, in fact — and this 
 would certainly not be a third great Liberal Reform. 
 The appointments and honours conferred on the 
 Nawab of Dacca and Mr. Bilgrami seem in Hindu 
 eyes to lend much probability to this undesirable 
 outlook. It was bad enough that the Government 
 in Eastern Bengal was suspected of allying itself 
 with Musalmans in order to break down Hindu 
 opposition to Partition, but if the conviction grows 
 throughout India that reliance on Musalman support 
 in legislation is an Imperial policy, we are simply 
 inviting discontent. 
 
 The matter is so delicate that it is advisable to 
 state the fact — the warning — in the fewest words 
 possible. Remember, the Sikhs are 
 Hindus ; the Gurkhas are Hindus ; the 
 Rajputs, the ancient warrior caste, are Hindus. 
 The position is unpromising, and entirely of our 
 own creating. Hope, however, lies in the wisdom 
 of educated Musalmans. Their community includes 
 many of the ablest and most patriotic men in our 
 Eastern Empire, who are generally on friendly terms 
 with Hindus, but anxiety attaches to the placeman or 
 wire-puller and to ignorant, fanatical mobs. The 
 Government may rely on Hindu support in every 
 effort it may make to educate and improve the 
 condition of the Musalman population. Hindus will 
 welcome their appointment to their full share in 
 administrative and judicial offices. Any attempt, 
 however, to use this important community as a 
 
 41 
 
The Causes of 
 
 political lever must fail. At least, its only success 
 would be the bitter alienation of all classes of Hindus 
 and the venal conciliation of the small class of 
 Muhamadans who seek State employment. 
 
 A large body of Musalmans in India have long 
 viewed our policy with extreme suspicion. It has 
 
 been driven into their minds for many 
 mL^ams. years back that England is the active 
 
 enemy of Islam all the world over, from 
 Afghanistan to Morocco. The charge is unjust and 
 untrue, but they believe that the Sultan of Turkey, 
 who to them is a political as well as a religious 
 Pope, has protected himself from British designs by 
 a German alliance. Only a month ago a remarkable 
 letter appeared in the Pioneer from a Musalman 
 gentleman, in which he warns us against an unfriendly 
 propaganda amongst his co-religionists in India. 
 
 "There has arisen," he writes, "another class in our midst 
 whose enthusiasm for their fellow-citizens of Egypt is of 
 questionable kind. I have best reasons to believe that 
 emissaries of Mustafa Kamel Pasha and his brood are touring 
 in India to make converts among the Muhamadans of this 
 country. The mushroom Anjumans (associations) that are 
 heard of now and then are, in most cases, organisations created 
 for the nefarious motive of the Egyptian seditionists. The 
 guileless Muhamadans, who have no political sense, do not 
 understand that they are becoming] dupes of the political fire- 
 brands of Egypt." 
 
 There is, in fact, a strong party amongst Musal- 
 mans which seems to bear England little affection. 
 Mr. Muhamad BarkatuUah, writing in the 
 wlaePo^y. New York Sun, advocates close union with 
 Hindus. He states that — 
 42 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 " No stone has been left unturned lately by the British to 
 create dissensions and quarrels between the two main branches 
 of the Indian community, and in some cases success has crowned 
 their efforts. The divine agencies, however, are working for the 
 liberation of India. Since the Partition of Bengal, in October, 
 1905, the leaders of thought in India have directed their efforts 
 toward bringing about union and fellow feeling between the 
 Hindus and Moslems. There was consternation in the British 
 camp when Hindus and Moslems were seen fraternising with 
 each other. Lala Lajpat Rai has been a foremost worker for 
 the union between the children of the soil without regard to 
 race or religion. As a peacemaker and unifier he was deemed 
 dangerous to British rule and hence deported to Mandalay." 
 
 It is a noticeable fact that the peasantry of Rawal- 
 pindi, for whom the six Hindu lawyers went to jail, 
 are mostly Musalmans. The only wise policy for 
 Mr. Morley is to avoid even the semblance of 
 religious favouritism. 
 
 43 
 
The Causes of 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LORD CQRZON AND EDUCATED INDIA 
 
 It is at the present time a commonplace for the 
 English Press to write of educated Indians as dis- 
 loyal, and this alleged fact is explained in 
 ™*BabuT*^ various ways. Too much education and 
 the rise of Japan are suggested by dif- 
 ferent ill-informed authorities as being the real stimuli 
 of " sedition." It is rarely attributed to the real 
 cause, viz., the repeated attacks made by Lord 
 Curzon on the Babu, as the Indian gentleman of 
 position and culture is nowadays briefly described. 
 Cet animal michant se difend quand on Vattaque. 
 
 It would be unfair to write or speak of Lord 
 
 Curzon without a full recognition of his many great 
 
 , and attractive qualities, his eloquence, his 
 
 LordCurzous ... 
 
 Great industry, and his high ideal of justice in 
 our courts of law. The acts which are 
 condemned in the following pages were beyond doubt 
 founded on a sincere belief in his policy as the best for 
 the British Empire and the best for the people of 
 India also. On his arrival in India Lord Curzon met 
 with a very cordial reception, particularly from the 
 princes, people, and Press of native India. His earlier 
 speeches were full of kindliness, and foreshadowed a 
 
 44 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 sympathetic administration. He had visited India 
 some ten years before as a tourist — a very industrious 
 and observant one — and seems to have formed strong 
 opinions on many questions that it would take a life- 
 time to assimilate. In carrying out these preconceived 
 views he got at loggerheads, first with the high Indian 
 officials, who were alarmed by his combined energy 
 and inexperience. Several of the Secretaries to 
 Government were removed and more complacent 
 officials introduced. In fact, the new Viceroy seemed 
 to regard the whole governing Civil Service in rather 
 an uncomplimentary manner, and he set to work to 
 bureaucratise it even more than it already was, and to 
 stamp out any independence of opinion that it still 
 possessed. This, however, was a small matter, and 
 would probably have done no permanent injury either 
 to the Civil Service or to India. 
 
 It was a very different matter when he fell foul of 
 the people of the country, for he was soon at open 
 merciless war with educated India. The 
 first blow fell on Indian Calcutta. More "ercuesB 
 
 War. 
 
 than thirty years ago the metropolis of 
 India received from Lord Northbrook a municipal 
 constitution, administered by a Chairman appointed by 
 the Crown, assisted by a Corporation of seventy-five 
 members, two-thirds, or fifty, of whom were elected by 
 the ratepayers, and one-third nominated by the Local 
 Government. For a couple of years before Lord 
 Curzon's arrival plague had been ravaging the Bom- 
 bay Presidency, and it was considered desirable — very 
 rightly — to strengthen the hands of the official Chair- 
 man and Executive of the Calcutta Municipality. A 
 
 45 
 
The Causes of 
 
 short enactment to effect this end was prepared by the 
 Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, with 
 the approval of the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, no change 
 in the constitution of the Corporation being con- 
 templated. Without knowledge and against ex- 
 perienced advice, three months after he arrived in 
 India, Lord Curzon reduced the number of the 
 elected members from fifty to twenty-five, thereby 
 giving the nominated element the majority. The 
 principles of self-government which had been de- 
 veloped and matured by Lords Northbrook, Dufferin, 
 Lansdowne and Elgin were uprooted by a stroke of 
 the pen. Twenty-eight Indian members of the 
 Corporation immediately resigned, mostly men of 
 authority and education, honourable members of the 
 Bengal Legislative Council, graduates of the English 
 Universities, leading barristers and doctors and the 
 representatives of the wealth of Calcutta, which, so far 
 as its landlords go, is practically a Hindu town. For 
 eight years past the capital of Bengal has been 
 administered in an absolutely bureaucratic manner 
 and with an entire disregard for the opinions of the 
 ratepayers, landlords, merchants, and leading men of 
 the Bengali nation. This unsympathetic system is 
 still in force after two years of Liberal administration. 
 
 Lord Curzon had struck educated India at its heart. 
 
 He had in preparation, however, a more effective 
 
 blow. He attacked education itself. He 
 
 Atta^B appointed a Commission on University 
 
 Education, the report of which, in the 
 
 words of an admirer in the Quarterly Review, " shook 
 
 Babudom to its very foundations." The recommenda- 
 
 46 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 tions of the Commission, of which Mr. Bilgrami, the 
 recently appointed member of the Council of the 
 Secretary of State, was an active member, may be 
 summarised in a sentence. Its whole aim was to 
 make education more expensive and less attainable 
 by the youth of India, and to disaffiliate as many 
 indigenous colleges as possible. Its most egregious 
 proposal ran thus : " Fees must not be fixed so low 
 as to tempt a poor student of but ordinary ability to 
 follow a University course, which it is not to his real 
 interest to undertake"! All India, Hindu and 
 Musalman, rose up against such reactionary folly. 
 
 A great public meeting was held at the Town Hall 
 of Calcutta to protest. I quote from the speeches of 
 three of the principal speakers. The Hon. , 
 Dr. Mahendra Lai Sarkar, the foremost Greatest 
 scientist in India, a member of the Legisla- 
 tive Council, and the most senior member of the 
 Senate of the Calcutta University, used language 
 which should appeal to every right-minded English- 
 man. Its loyalty is as conspicuous as its pathos : 
 
 " I have told you," he said, " often and often that we are 
 enjoying under the rule of this nation more Hberty, more 
 freedom of thought and action, than we ever enjoyed under our 
 own. But alas ! that I should live to see this hberty ominously 
 being threatened in a matter which has been the greatest 
 blessing under British rule. Without imputing any motives 
 to anybody, I cannot but observe, and it breaks my heart to 
 do so, that the recommendations of the Commission seem to me 
 to strike at the root of general education and to discourage the 
 study of science." 
 
 The Hon. Narendra Nath Sen, another member of 
 the Legislative Council, declared that — 
 
 47 
 
The Causes of 
 
 "the matter under discussion to-day may, without exaggera- 
 tion, be iitly described as one of life or death to the aspirations 
 " A Hatter of ^^'^ progress of our countrymen. The recom- 
 Lifeor mendations of the Universities Commission mean 
 Death." death to countless aspirants after not only fame and 
 fortune, but for very subsistence. They threaten the existence 
 of more than half the colleges in India." 
 
 Maulvi Abul Kasim, B.A., the delegate of the 
 Muhamadan Association, denounced the wrong to 
 the schools of his people thus : 
 
 " If these recommendations would seriously affect the pro- 
 gress of the Hindu boys, they would be ten times more injurious 
 to the Moslem youth. Poverty, you have been told, gentlemen, 
 is no crime, and it is an admitted fact that the Indian Musalmans 
 are a very poor community ; I may warn you, gentlemen, that 
 if these recommendations are given effect to, it would be a 
 death-blow to the spread of high education among the 
 Musalmans and to Muhamadan progress in general." 
 
 To destroy self-government in Calcutta and ham- 
 string education did not complete Lord Curzon's 
 
 programme of reaction. He determined 
 of the to make use of the public service as 
 
 a means of harassment. Under Lords 
 Dufferin and Lansdowne a wise system had been 
 developed of obtaining junior ofificers for the sub- 
 ordinate Executive Service and the subordinate 
 Judicial Service by competitive examinations, with 
 the result that the deputy magistracies and many 
 minor judgeships were being filled with Masters of 
 Arts and Bachelors of Law — in fact, by some of the 
 most distinguished graduates of the Indian Universi- 
 ties. Lord Curzon could not abide such a progressive 
 
 48 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 method of recruitment ; so he knocked it all on the 
 head and reverted to the old, bad, and degrading 
 system of appointment by nomination. The son of 
 the sycophant should in future be the magistrate or 
 judge of India. This unwholesome policy is still in 
 force after two years of Liberal administration. 
 
 I cannot give space to Lord Curzon's other acts of 
 unwisdom, absolutely uncontrolled by the Conserva- 
 tive Government in England. He seems ^ ^ ^^ 
 
 ° The Vntrutli- 
 
 to have completely lost his balance. In mneasof 
 February, 1905, as Chancellor of the Cal- 
 cutta University, he made a speech on truthfulness, 
 prefacing his address by the remark, " There are 
 scores of people who pride themselves on never 
 telling a falsehood and yet who are habitually false — 
 false to others and false to themselves." The Indian 
 Press did not apply this appreciation entirely to them- 
 selves. He then went on to assure his audience that 
 he did not mean that "Asiatics deliberately or 
 habitually deviate from the truth," but, " undoubtedly, 
 truth took a high place in the moral codes of the 
 West before it had been similarly honoured in the 
 East, where craftiness and diplomatic wile have always 
 been held in much repute." There was another blaze 
 of indignation and a public meeting of protest at the 
 Calcutta Town Hall. Lord Curzon came second best 
 out of that embroglio. 
 
 At Simla he forgot himself so much as to remark 
 that he was compelled to say that "wealthy 
 native India has not yet reached a high charity." 
 standard of practical charity." If there is 
 one virtue which the opulent Indian has, it is the most 
 
 49 D 
 
The Causes of 
 
 open-handed generosity towards the poor. The dis- 
 tribution of food and money to the destitute by men 
 of even small wealth is the very commonest occurrence 
 in Indian villages. 
 
 The. Official Secrets Act is a good index to the 
 regime Lord Curzon regarded as the best system of 
 
 administration. I will only quote what the 
 RttMU?'**^ two most Conservative of Anglo-Indian 
 
 newspapers thought of it. On the nth 
 of December, 1903, the Pioneer declared that it 
 gave — 
 
 " a power of coercion over the Indian Press which would be 
 more worthy of a Government like that of Russia than of a 
 British Indian administration presided over by such a distin- 
 guished statesman as the present Viceroy." 
 
 " Section 6 provides a special procedure to be adopted after 
 the arrest of the person charged with an offence under the Bill. 
 Instead of taking the person, as in the case of any ordinary 
 criminal offender, before the nearest magistrate having juris- 
 diction in the case, the police may take or send the person 
 before the commanding officer of the nearest military station. We 
 stand amazed at the very audacity of such a proposal. Not 
 only does the Bill violate the most elementary principle of 
 criminal jurisprudence, as we have already pointed out, but in 
 this latter provision it proposes to substitute for the ordinary 
 magistracy of the country the jurisdiction of a military com- 
 mander. We find it most difficult to treat such a proposal with 
 patience or even seriously. Hitherto it has been the undisputed 
 right of every man who has not voluntarily placed himself under 
 military discipline to be brought before the civil power repre- 
 sented by the nearest magistrate. But as if the Government 
 were determined to violate this right also, the military com- 
 mander of the nearest military station, which may be ever so 
 far distant, is to exercise jurisdiction in the first instance under 
 this monstrous Bill." 
 
 50 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 In spite of every protest this Bill was passed into 
 law by an official maiority. The Pioneer^ s 
 
 - , ■' 1. ( , . . "Inward In- 
 
 nnal comment supplies the explanation of atinctsofan 
 Lord Curzon's hostility to educated men, ^' 
 
 " The Bill," it wrote, " which was passed on the 4th instant 
 (March, 1904) in the Imperial Legislative Council throws a 
 curious light upon the native impulses and tendencies of an 
 autocratic Government. 
 
 " The truth is that there is that about the Bill which appeals 
 to the inward instincts of an oligarchy. It gives them the 
 whip-hand over their critics and invests them with a power 
 of coercion that can be applied whenever criticism promises to 
 be inconvenient and annoying. The measure in the shape in 
 which it has been made law practically forbids more than 
 the mildest reference to any important civil or political matter 
 until official sanction is given — by the publication of a com- 
 munique or of papers bearing upon the subject — to freedom 
 of comment in the Press." 
 
 The Englishman of Calcutta was not less ^.-Hatefui 
 outspoken, referring to the new law as — Aasaiut." 
 
 " the hateful assault on the peace of mind and liberty of every 
 British subject in India, which is made by the Official Secrets 
 Bill." 
 
 It did not trouble about its effect on native journalism, 
 but added : 
 
 " The Bill has the appearance of being drawn up by some 
 military man with a fine admiration for Russian methods and 
 an absolute ignorance of British traditions of liberty and 
 freedom." 
 
 This extraordinary law, which is unworthy of a 
 
 51 
 
The Causes of 
 
 South American Republic, still, after two years of 
 Liberal government, adorns the statute-book of India. 
 In all things Indian the Liberal Party is the Executor 
 of Lord Curzon's reactionary policy, and up to the 
 present time it is nothing more. 
 
 52 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 
 
 "It has been said, and unfortunately by an important 
 
 person in India (Lord Curzon) that this demonstration of 
 
 opposition in Bengal was < machine-made 
 
 opinion,' that it was the work of political »fr- Money 
 
 • .. ,,.... _ . Juatifles 
 
 Wire-pullers and political agitators. I have Agitation. 
 
 often heard that kind of allegation made be- 
 fore. Governments are apt when an inconvenient storm 
 of public opinion arises to lay it at the door of political 
 wire-pullers and agitators. (Hear, hear.) There are, 
 however, Indian officials of great weight and authority 
 who entirely put aside that insinuation, and who argue 
 that these Calcutta agitators would have had no response 
 from the people they were appealing to, if there had not 
 been in the minds of the people a distinct feeling that 
 they were going to suffer a great wrong and incon- 
 venience; and, although no doubt the agitators could 
 form and disseminate these views, yet these sentiments 
 and views existed quite independently of any wire- 
 pulling or agitation. That is my own conclusion from 
 reading the papers." — Mr. Morley in the Debate on the 
 Address, Feb. 26, 1906. 
 
 The English Press in India cannot at the present 
 time inveigh too strongly against the Bengali people 
 and their few friends in Parliament for con- , ,. ^ „ 
 
 EngliBb Press 
 
 demning Partition. Yet it is the fact that strongly 
 these journals, English, Conservative and 
 Imperialist as they all are, were the first to condemn 
 
 S3 
 
The Causes of 
 
 and the most outspoken in their condemnation of this 
 very measure. Out of dozens of columns of hostile 
 criticisms I have space for only a few extracts. The 
 Englishman is the chief British organ in Calcutta, and 
 on the 23rd of January, 1904, it wound up a vigorous 
 article in these words, every one of which deserves 
 consideration : — 
 
 " The Government can hardly be in very much doubt as to 
 
 the popularity of its proposals to dismember the Province of 
 
 Bengal, and especially those of them which refer to 
 
 " BeP'iB'iaa* the transference of Dacca and Mymensingh to the 
 
 to 6vory 
 Community." Province of Assam. The proposals for Partition 
 
 have been attacked in every key and every language. 
 They are repugnant alike to sentiment and to common sense. They 
 are opposed by every community^ and by every section of each com- 
 munity. And within the threatened districts themselves they 
 have awakened a storm of passionate protest which has surprised 
 those who have led it. No still, small voice has been upraised 
 on behalf of the Government. If it had, it would only have em- 
 phasised the deafening clamour of the protesting interests. 
 Really, a casual observer might think that the Government had 
 pondered over the best means of stirring up its subjects in 
 Bengal, and had selected this as the quickest and most amusing 
 manner of setting the Province in a ferment." 
 
 "cruBiiiiig ^' referred to the " thunder of execration" 
 ODjections." aroused, and a month later declared that — 
 
 " Sir H. Cotton's objections, coming on the top of those of the 
 High Court, are crushing and unanswerable. . . . The advocates 
 of Partition, whose name is certainly not Legion, must find some 
 other weapon than futile attempts to discredit the bona fides of 
 their opponents." 
 
 The Pioneer, which is ordinarily the exponent of 
 
 S4 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 the views of Government, in a temperate article on 
 the 13th of January, 1904, after remarking 
 that there might be some justification for "j^y^^jf 
 annexing Chittagong to Assam, stated : — 
 
 "The case is altogether different as regards the Dacca and 
 Mymensingh districts. They can gain no possible advantage by 
 being cut off from Bengal, and by the severance of the strong 
 ties which bind them to Calcutta. They are both districts of 
 importance, second to none in Bengal either in respect of educa- 
 tion or wealth. Both of these districts have been subject to the 
 administration of Bengal from Calcutta from the earliest days of 
 the British occupation." 
 
 In 1896, when the suggestion of Partition was very 
 severely condemned by the High Court, the Pioneer 
 declared that : " If we British were a logical people 
 and impatient of anomalies, the relief of the over- 
 worked government of the Lower Provinces would lie 
 irresistibly in the separation of Bihar and Chhota 
 Nagpur." This proper and workable solution is exactly 
 what the peoples of Bengal and Bihar are prepared to 
 accept. But what was " logical " and " irresistible " 
 in 1896 became seditious in 1906! 
 
 No more extraordinary change has ever taken place 
 in politics than the fact that these journals now exhaust 
 themselves in misrepresenting the men 
 
 . , TT r % UnstateBmaji 
 
 who attempt m the House of Commons to lUteReaent- 
 give voice to the arguments of the English- 
 man and Pioneer in 1904, The change, no doubt, is 
 due to an unstatesmanlike resentment at the Bengali 
 boycott of English goods — an unwise act, no doubt, 
 but one that in no way justifies persistence in the 
 
 55 
 
The Causes of 
 
 radically bad — to use the words of the High Court, 
 
 the " retrograde and mischievous " policy of Partition. 
 
 The manner in which Partition was carried through 
 
 has been so entirely opposed to all precedent that it 
 
 "Ad Hoc" ^^ difificult to fix on its most unexpected 
 
 ideuteuant- feature. When a measure of such difficulty 
 
 was being undertaken, it was only natural 
 to expect that the Government of India would have 
 placed the carrying out of its plans in the hands of 
 high officials, who were thoroughly acquainted with 
 the methods and circumstances of Bengal administra- 
 tion. The exact opposite was the line of conduct 
 adopted. Lord Curzon appointed two non- Bengal 
 civilians. Sir Andrew Fraser and Sir Bampfylde 
 Fuller, to be Lieutenant-Governors of the two 
 Bengals he was creating, although neither of them 
 had served for one day in any part of the Province, 
 and neither of them could speak a word of the 
 language of Bengal. Lord Curzon knew be- 
 yond all doubt that practically the whole Civil 
 Service of Bengal was hostile to his scheme. He 
 consequently drove out Sir James Bourdillon, 
 K.C.S.I., the experienced Bengal official, who acted 
 as Lieutenant-Governor for a year, and then he 
 reported to the Secretary of State, and through him 
 to the Parliament of England, that the opinions of his 
 two supporters, imported ad hoc, Sir Andrew Fraser 
 
 and Sir Bampfylde Fuller, were the 
 MttfBMta. opinions of the Civil Service of Bengal. 
 
 The Blue Books laid before Parliament in 
 connection with the Partition have been bowdlerised 
 in an unworthy manner. The reports of most dis- 
 
 56 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 tinguished Bengal officials, if hostile to Partition, have 
 been omitted, and it is well known that a Minute con- 
 demning Partition by an ex- President of the Bengal 
 Chamber of Commerce, a leading merchant of 
 Calcutta, similarly found its way to the waste-paper 
 basket. 
 
 In 1896 the question of Partition was raised by Sir 
 Charles Elliot, a Lieutenant-Governor who, before 
 his appointment to that office, had never 
 served for a day in the Province. It was tne Higi 
 he who, in his inexperience, started the idea 
 of separating a portion of Eastern Bengal and uniting 
 it to Assam. The proposal was received with general 
 condemnation and dropped. Amongst the authori- 
 ties consulted was the High Court of Calcutta. Its 
 opinion was decisive and practically killed the pro- 
 posal. "The judges apprehend," they wrote, "that 
 what is required of them is an expression of their 
 opinion as to how the change, if carried out, would 
 afifect the administration of civil and criminal justice," 
 the most important of all objects of administration. 
 " The proposal seems to the judges to be a step in 
 the wrong direction. To transfer districts which, ever 
 since the East India Company assumed the adminis- 
 tration, have formed a part of the regulation territory, 
 cannot but appear in the light of a retrograde 
 movement." " It seems to the judges, therefore, 
 that a transfer of the Chittagong division 
 
 00 "Retrograde 
 
 to the Government of Assam as at present and mis- 
 constituted, would not fail to be a retro- 
 grade and mischievous step." This outspoken con- 
 demnation had a very striking effect in after years. 
 
 57 
 
The Causes of 
 
 When Lord Curzon took up the Partition of Bengal, 
 though he consulted everybody and every authority, 
 from European merchants to Musalman societies, 
 he very wisely abstained from asking the High Court 
 what it thought of his " retrograde and mischievous " 
 action. He did not want his pet project to be again 
 described in this accurate, curt, and contemptuous 
 fashion. 
 
 The following translation of "Bande Mataram," the 
 striking national hymn of the Bengalis, written some 
 
 thirty years ago, may be accepted as suffi- 
 Hauonai cient evidence of the intense national 
 
 feeling, which Lord Curzon recklessly out- 
 raged for the sake, as he explained, of "adminis- 
 trative convenience " : — 
 
 " My Motherland I sing, 
 
 Her splendid streams, her glorious trees, 
 The zephyr from the far-off Vindyan heights, 
 
 Her fields of waving corn, 
 The rapturous radiance of her moonlit nights, 
 
 The trees in flower that flame afar, 
 The smiling days that sweetly vocal are, 
 
 The happy, blessed Motherland ! 
 Her will by seventy million throats extolled. 
 
 Her power twice seventy million arms uphold ; 
 Her strength let no man scorn. 
 
 Thou art my head, thou art my heart, 
 My life and soul art thou, 
 
 My song, my worship and my art. 
 Before thy feet I bow, 
 
 As Durga, scourge of all thy foes, 
 As Lakshmi, bowered in the flower, 
 
 That in the water grows, 
 As Bani, wisdom, power ; 
 
 The source of all our might, 
 58 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Our every temple doth thy form unfold — 
 Unequalled, tender, happy, pure, 
 
 Of splendid streams, of glorious trees, 
 My Motherland I sing, 
 
 The stainless charms that e'er endure, 
 And verdant banks and wholesome breeze. 
 
 That with her praises ring." 
 
 Except perhaps Oudh, Bengal is the oldest Hindu 
 kingdom, which still retained under British rule its 
 ancient geographical boundaries. The , ^ 
 
 TVT 1 , 1 .1 , The Oldest 
 
 Musalman respected these time-honoured Hindu 
 ethnic frontiers, and it has been left to an 
 unsympathetic Englishman to at last invade their 
 old-world memories. The civilisation of Bengal was 
 the highest in India before the Musalman Conquest, 
 ^indeed before the advent of the Saxon to Great 
 Britain. Two thousand years ago her schools of 
 philosophy rivalled the teachings of the Greek doctors 
 of mental science. Her political system centred 
 round four great cities — Gaur, Bikrampur, Navadwip 
 and Mahasthan or Barendri. Gaur had over a 
 million of inhabitants in the early centuries of the 
 Christian era. Her great temples of carved stone 
 afterwards formed the quarry from which the Musal- 
 mans built the Medina Mosque, their largest archi- 
 tectural effort in Bengal. The ruins of Mahasthan 
 cover a quadrangle seven miles across. The vast 
 reservoirs of the Pal Kings are famous, one measur- 
 ing a mile in length, half a mile in width, and forty 
 feet in depth. 
 
 On the 1 6th of last October, as on the same 
 date in the two preceding years, the people of Bengal 
 
 59 
 
The Causes of 
 
 kept the anniversary of the great wrong that has 
 
 been done them. In Calcutta and in all the large 
 
 towns of the Province they came together 
 
 MowSng. i" public meeting, fasting and barefooted, 
 
 dressed in mourning garments, and thence 
 
 proceeded to their temples to take the following 
 
 oath : — 
 
 "Whereas the Government has thought fit to effec- 
 tuate the Partition of Bengal in spite of the universal 
 protest of the Bengali nation, we hereby pledge and 
 proclaim that we as a people shall do everything in our 
 power to counteract the evil effects of the dismember- 
 ment of our Province, and to maintain the integrity of 
 our race. So may God help us ! " 
 
 These are facts that can hardly please any right- 
 minded Englishman. They should be gall and 
 wormwood to an honest Liberal; / 
 
 A very singular thing about this extraordinary" 
 measure -Is that the Secretary of State for India has 
 never ventured to say one word in its 
 
 Mr. Money's ^ ■, , r 
 
 condenma- favour. On the contrary, on the very nrst 
 occasion on which he addressed the House 
 of Commons, Mr, Morley declared that "it was, and 
 remains, undoubtedly an administrative operation, 
 which went wholly and decisively against the wishes 
 of most of the people concerned." The entire history 
 of this measure is replete with incidents of an un- 
 precedented kind. Perhaps the most noticeable is 
 that it was forced through by a flagrant act of 
 contempt for the House of Commons. In August, 
 1905, the question of Partition was brought before the 
 
 60 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 House of Commons by Mr. Herbert Roberts, M.P., 
 and on Sir Henry Fowler, an ex-Secretary of State 
 for India, complaining that the House was entirely 
 without knowledge of the facts, the then Secretary 
 of State, Mr. Brodrick, pledged himself that it would 
 not be given effect to till all the papers relating to it 
 had been laid before Parliament. This pledge was 
 broken within two months, and the legislation in India 
 necessary for the enforcement of Partition was carried 
 through at Simla at a hole-and-corner meeting of 
 Lord Gurzon and the official members of the Legisla- 
 tive Council, at which not a single Indian member 
 was present. It is hard to understand how any 
 member of Parliament, even a Conserva- 
 
 Lord Curzon's 
 
 tive, can condone such treatment of both contempt for 
 
 the Indian and English Legislatures. 
 I Lord Curzon, in the omnipotence of his viceregal 
 [power, treated both with equal indignity and the 
 
 Liberal Party submits without a syllable of protest. 
 _^, Partition was forced through, although Sir Bamp- 
 
 fylde Fuller, whom Lord Curzon after- , _ „ „ 
 
 ' . Sir B. Fuller 
 
 wards chose as Lieutenant-Governor, teustiie 
 condemned it in these words : — 
 
 " Indian opinion in the Assam Valley is greatly opposed to 
 the project. The town of Dacca is difficult of access from 
 the Assam Valley, and no development of railway communica- 
 tions, which is in present contemplation, seems likely to bring 
 Dacca as near to it as Shillong is at present. There is no com- 
 munity of feeling between the Assamese and the people of 
 these districts — ^indeed, it is hardly too much to say that they 
 are strongly antipathetic." 
 
 In other words, Lord Curzon rent ancient homo- 
 
 6i 
 
The Causes of 
 
 geneous Bengal in twain in order to link together 
 two "antipathetic" peoples in an ill-assorted union, 
 although, in Mr. Morley's words, they were both 
 "wholly and decisively" hostile to it. I must say 
 that I sincerely sympathise with Sir Bampfylde 
 Fuller. He loyally undertook the foolish task laid 
 upon him. Partition naturally led to passionate 
 protest, and he then found it necessary to carry out 
 the second part of his instructions from Simla — 
 "to hammer the Bengalis," as he is said to have 
 succinctly described the policy, of which he was the 
 instrument. 
 
 That the people of Bengal detested the Partition 
 
 there is no manner of doubt, but a fact that has been 
 
 concealed from the Engflish Parliament and 
 
 The Civil , 
 
 Service people is that the great mass of officials in 
 Bengal condemned it as the most unsuit- 
 able possible for the Province, as injurious to British 
 administration and as financially wasteful. I myself 
 have received letters from many of my brother Bengal 
 civilians, some of them men of the highest rank. I 
 have discussed it with as many more, and I never 
 knew one who did not condemn the new boundary 
 which Lord Curzon introduced as administratively — 
 that is, from the English standpoint — bad. I met at 
 the India Office an ex- Lieutenant-Governor who had 
 gone there expressly to protest. There are now in 
 England four ex- Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal, 
 ex-members of the Bengal Civil Service, and during 
 their terms of office every one of them has left on 
 record opinions, not unfavourable to Lord Curzon's 
 scheme, for nothing so inept had ever been dreamt 
 
 62 
 
'*f. 
 
MuzaFfjarpui' 
 
 Kuch§Shar I 
 
 At-LAHABAO ^ 
 
 Arrah pATNti 
 
 1 
 
 Biragalpul 
 
 Dinajpio 
 
 LMlldl 
 
 oRajstiahl 
 
 ot^mensi(i|h 
 
 O 
 
 SHILLONG 
 
 5ylhcl 
 
 T ''^ 
 
 Rancfii 
 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 ""•"wa 
 
 DMCA 
 O 
 
 ' N C E S, 
 
 • CALCUTTA 
 
 ••u-v^-j"' 
 
 ' 2 
 
 / 
 
 
 B E 
 
 
 < 
 
 Of 
 
 m 
 
 «? 
 
 A . B.C . D. (Blue) The line of partition accepted by 
 
 Bengalis 
 X.Y. Z. (Red) Lord Curzon's part/t/on. 
 Bengal Proper /s shaded in Ye/ low. 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 of, but strongly in favour of the Partition which the 
 Bengali people are prepared to accept. There are 
 half a dozen or more big files of reports and corre- 
 spondence in the record-rooms of the Bengal Office on 
 the subject of Partition, and they all reject anything 
 like Lord Curzon's solution. It is probably the know- 
 ledge of this fact that makes the very thought of 
 inquiry so distasteful to the Government of India. 
 
 A partition of Bengal is a perfectly reasonable and 
 defensible measure. It has been spoken of as an 
 executive necessity for half a century. The 
 breaking up of this great administrative Acceptable 
 
 ., V 1 1 J J c Partition, 
 
 unit has always been regarded as one of 
 much simplicity, because Bengal — or to use its more 
 correct name, the Lower Provinces of Bengal — consists 
 of five sub-provinces, each with its own distinctive 
 racial and physical characteristics. They are as 
 follows, with their areas and populations at last 
 census. The map on the opposite page will further 
 elucidate their inter-connection. It shows by a blue 
 line the partition which the people of Bengal are 
 prepared to accept and which (this is the all-important 
 fact of the whole controversy) the Government and 
 Civil Service of Bengal have always approved : — 
 
 The Lower Provinces of Bengal. 
 
 Area. 
 Sq. Miles, Population, 
 
 Bengal Proper 79)068 42,943,325 
 
 Orissa 9,841 4.343>iSo 
 
 Assam 52,959 51841,878 
 
 Total 141,868 53,128,353 
 
 63 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Area. 
 Sq. Miles. Population. 
 
 Bihar 35,532 21,547,538 
 
 Chhota Nagpur 32,433 6,710,116 
 
 Total 67,965 28,357,654 
 
 Bengal Proper is ancient Bengal, and it is the bone 
 of contention. Lord Curzon cut it in two, allocating 
 25 millions of its population to Eastern Bengal and 
 leaving 1 8 millions under the Calcutta administration. 
 The greatest of all the arguments in favour of the 
 Bihar solution is that it breaks no racial ties and 
 
 recognises ethnical and linguistic frontiers 
 'ftont^" that have existed from the dawn of history, 
 
 and which even the Musalman conquerors 
 never disturbed. To the right or east of the blue 
 line, A, B, C, D, lie Bengal, Orissa, and Assam. 
 The languages of the two latter sub-Provinces are 
 dialects of Bengali, an elder daughter of Sanscrit, 
 whilst to the left or west Hindi is the almost universal 
 speech, and its vocabulary is as much Persian as 
 Indian. One is a synthetic, the other an analytic 
 tongue. The Behari and the Bengali are more 
 widely different than the Celt and the Teuton in race 
 origin, in language, in marriage customs, in forms of 
 land tenure, and even in food, the Behari being a 
 wheat or bread eater, whilst the Bengali's staple diet 
 is boiled rice. Lord Curzon probably knew little 
 about these facts. 
 
 Dacca, the new capital, is a minor town of only 
 90,542 inhabitants, situated in the midst of mighty 
 rivers and vast swamps. It is most difficult of ap- 
 proach and most unhealthy, cholera having found 
 
 64 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 more European victims there than in any other town 
 in Bengal. It is the terminus of only one puny 
 railway, some seventy miles long. Turn- 
 ing to the popular partition, which had the undeBirawe 
 highest official approval till Lord Curzon "*''***'■ 
 came to upset everything, one finds in Patna, the 
 headquarters of the proposed Bihar-Chhota Nagpur 
 Province, an ancient city, the capital of all India in 
 the centuries before Christ, with a population of 
 165,192, the second largest city in the Lower Pro- 
 vinces. Patna is the terminus of five great railways, 
 which spread out all over the Empire. It is healthy, 
 and most easy of approach. 
 
 Liberals are probably unaware that it is the Admin- 
 istration which they placed in power that is now 
 regarded with the bitterest feelings by the 
 Bengali nation. The Partition took effect ^l^^"®* 
 on October 16, 1905, and meetings of pro- 
 test were held all over Bengal. The noblest as well 
 as the most educated of the Bengali race took a 
 prominent part. At a monster meeting held in the 
 Town Hall of Calcutta, under the presidency of the 
 Maharaja of Cossimbazar, the resolution condemn- 
 ing it was proposed by the Maharaja of Mymensingh 
 and seconded by Raja Peari Mohun Mukherjea. But 
 it soon became apparent that a change of Ministry in 
 England was imminent. Tory support would soon 
 be withdrawn from Lord Curzon's offensive act. The 
 Bengali Press teemed with articles prophesying 
 Liberal victory, and when the victory was won and, on 
 Decembers, 1905, Mr. John Morley became Secretary 
 of State for India, jubilation is the only word to 
 
 6s E 
 
The Causes of 
 
 express the joy of the people. Every journal cried 
 out, "Now at last, after seven weary years of mis- 
 government, shall we get justice." Agitation and 
 boycott both collapsed. During the three months to 
 the beginning of March, 1906, hardly a single public 
 meeting was held. Their English friends assured 
 the Bengali leaders that the Liberal Party was brim- 
 ming over with the principles of justice, and that they 
 were certain of a fair, dispassionate, if not a kindly 
 hearing ! We advised patience and the avoidance of 
 agitation. We knew little of the ways of politicians 
 and the art of shelving difficult questions. The 
 officials of the India Office were more rusds, and when 
 Mr. Morley came to deal with the subject he informed 
 the House of Commons that there had been a " great 
 subsidence in feeling" in regard to Partition in 
 Bengal. The statement was inaccurate. There had 
 been no change in feeling, but a " great subsidence " 
 in agitation, due to the restraining influence of Anglo- 
 Indian members of Parliament, and especially to a 
 sincere trust in the Liberal Party. Has that trust, 
 that confidence in Liberal professions, been mis- 
 placed? Time alone can tell, but if it has been 
 betrayed it will form one of the least honourable 
 pages in the history of the Party of Progress in 
 England. 
 
 66 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MUSALMANS AND PARTITION 
 
 The favourite, almost the only, argument of those 
 who defend Lord Curzon's Partition of Bengal is 
 that it is desired by the Musalmans of 
 that Province. The statement is an abso- * p^io^ 
 lute perversion of fact, but may I ask 
 since when has it become a part of the policy of 
 the British people to subdivide our possessions 
 according to the religious tenets of their inhabitants ? 
 At least, when did it become part of Liberal policy 
 to maintain or advocate such a reactionary principle 
 of administration ? It is quite true that it seemed 
 to form the ideal of Lord Curzon. The Hon. Mr. 
 Chaudhuri, M.A., LL.B., Camb., an ex-member of 
 the Legislative Council of Bengal, describes this 
 legacy of the late Viceroy as the root evil of the 
 whole position. He, like all Hindus, not only in 
 Bengal but in India generally, believes that the 
 main object of "the Curzon policy" was 
 
 " to drive the wedge between Hindu and Muhamadan. Lord 
 Curzon apparently took the Vambery view that India could 
 only be held on the basis of racial animosity. He feared that 
 a rapprochemeni between Hindu and Muhamadan would be fatal, 
 
 67 
 
The Causes of 
 
 for underneath the old antagonism there was developing a sort 
 of political unity. The whole Curzon official attitude is directed 
 to feeding the racial fires. That is the reason for the Partition 
 of Bengal — to carve a Muhamadan State out of one which, as a 
 whole, was Hindu ; to set up in Dacca a rival Muhamadan 
 centre to the Hindu centre of Calcutta. The idea runs through 
 all the Curzon tradition. Foster Muhamadanism at the expense 
 of Hinduism. Where Muhamadanism is weak, the rights of the 
 minority must be sustained ; where it is strong, the rule of the 
 majority must prevail." 
 
 Lord Curzon has very recently written to the Press 
 to deny this view of his policy, and I believe that 
 he did not himself understand the full 
 DiBuiS^ meaning of his action. His chief officials, 
 however, were under no misapprehension, 
 as the following letter from Sir Herbert Risley, the 
 Home Secretary, dated September 13, 1904, abun- 
 dantly proves : — 
 
 " The boundary suggested," he wrote in defending the Parti- 
 tion, " would bring within the Eastern Province the bulk of the 
 characteristic Muharaadans of Bengal, who form 78 per cent, 
 of the population in Rajshahi, 50 per cent, in Dinajpur, and 
 48 per cent, in Malda. Not only would it give Dacca a central 
 position in relation to the rest of the new Province, but it would 
 tend, in course of time, to confer on that city the special char- 
 acter of a provincial capital, where Muhamadan interests would 
 be strongly represented, if not predominant" (Blue Book, 
 Cd. 2746, p. 203). 
 
 This fatal policy is still in full force at Simla and 
 is the mainspring of the " reforms " attributed to 
 Mr. Morley, but which are entirely the work of the 
 officials whom Lord Curzon left behind him in India, 
 holding the highest and most influential positions in 
 
 68 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 the Supreme Government. It has had a temporary 
 success and led to serious rioting in Eastern Bengal, 
 but already Hindus and Musalmans are remembering 
 that they are brethren of the same race, and intelli- 
 gent men of both religions look forward to a great 
 development of their common country under the 
 aegis of the British Crown. 
 
 The sole supporter of Partition amongst Musal- 
 mans holding a prominent position in Bengal is 
 Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, who certainly 
 could not be described as a personage of s^^j^j. 
 special influence in his community before 
 he took an active part in advocating this measure. 
 He is not a member of the old Musalman nobility 
 of the Province, being, in fact, the grandson of a 
 very worthy merchant who amassed a considerable 
 fortune, which he invested successfully in landed 
 property near Dacca. This founder of the family 
 was regarded with affection by the Hindus. He 
 was very munificent and established hospitals and 
 other charitable institutions, for which public services 
 he was very properly awarded a title. The present 
 Nawab probably perceives that if Dacca becomes 
 the capital of a new provincial government the en- 
 hanced value to his estate will be very appreciable. 
 At present he is not in affluent circumstances, and 
 the Government of India recently granted him a 
 loan of ;^20,ooo. It also nominated him to the 
 Viceroy's Legislative Council, as well as to the local 
 council. It is difficult to deny that his chief claim 
 to these distinctions is that he has been a thick and 
 thin supporter of the hated policy of Partition. 
 
 69 
 
The Causes of 
 
 The Partition of Bengal was from the outset 
 
 condemned by all that was best, most noble and 
 
 „, , , most educated amongst -the Musalmans 
 Educated ° , 
 
 Musaimana of Bengal. As proof I would quote the 
 
 *°™' protest addressed to the Government of 
 
 Bengal by Nawab Sayyid Amir Hosain, C.I.E., 
 
 Hon. Secretary of the Central Musalman Association, 
 
 Calcutta, on March i, 1904, in these words : — 
 
 " The Committee of the Muhamadan Association, which has 
 its branches all over Bengal, are not in favour of any change in 
 the territorial limits of that Province. My Committee are of 
 opinion that no portion of the Bengali-speaking race should be 
 separated from Bengal without the clearest necessity for such 
 separation, and they think such necessity does not exist. . . . One 
 of the arguments for not transferring Orissa from Bengal, as 
 stated in Mr. Risley's (the Home Secretary) letter, is that the 
 prescription of a century is difficult to break, and I beg to point 
 out that it is still more difficult to break the prescription of 
 many centuries." 
 
 The old Musalman nobility of Bengal are keenly 
 
 proud of the greatness of their ancient Province. 
 
 „ . It is important to note that the largest 
 
 Musalman '^ ° 
 
 NobUity meetinsf of protest at Calcutta against 
 
 Resent or a 
 
 Partition had for its chairman the Hon. 
 Muhamad Yusuf Khan Bahadur, a member of the 
 Legislative Council, a Fellow of the Calcutta Uni- 
 versity and President of ,the Central Muhamadan 
 Association, His Highness the Nawab Bahadur of 
 Murshidabad, the premier nobleman of Bengal and 
 lineal descendant of the Musalman governors who 
 administered Bengal on behalf of the Moghul, re- 
 called the very recent days when " Hindus and 
 
 70 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Musalmans were all brothers together." Amongst 
 those who most strongly condemned disruption were 
 the Hon. Nawab Sayyid Muhamad, at present 
 Musalman representative on the Viceroy's Legislative 
 Council, and His Highness the Aga Khan, the 
 President of the great Muhamadan deputation to 
 Lord Minto in October, 1906, who said "he was 
 opposed to the Partition from the beginning, and 
 recent events had not induced him to modify his 
 views." He allowed it to be stated that "any 
 reference in support of Partition would have precluded 
 His Highness from joining the deputation." This 
 deputation laid before Lord Minto the grievances 
 and wishes of the Musalman community, and if that 
 community desired the Partition of Bengal, then was 
 its opportunity. It not only never mentioned Parti- 
 tion but it did more. It was understood to have 
 discouraged the Nawab of Dacca, who was absent, 
 from joining the deputation on account of his action 
 in regard to Partition. This whole fable of Musal^ 
 man approval of the Partition is a misstatement of 
 official origin. 
 
 A Seditious Meetings Act has just passed the 
 Legislative Council of Lord Minto. A circumstance 
 that should arrest attention is the fact that 
 
 Musalmftn 
 
 out of the hundreds of districts in India Peasantry 
 it has been immediately^ applied only to 
 one, the district of Bakhargunj in Eastern Bengal, 
 in which, according to the last census (1901) 68 per 
 cent, are Musalmans, and the capital of which, 
 Burisal, is the headquarters of the opposition to 
 Partition. In that district the Hindus and Musal- 
 
 71 
 
The Causes of 
 
 mans, all peasants, are on the best terms, and the 
 leader of the latter, Maulvi Liakat Husain, is at 
 present in jail for "sedition," 
 
 Mr. Morley stated last July in the House of 
 Commons that " the situation in Eastern Bengal was 
 strained owing to the bitterness existing 
 "^mot."^ between Hindus and Muhamadans con- 
 sequent on the attempts to compel Muha- 
 madans by violence to abstain from purchasing 
 foreign goods." This statement, which the Secretary 
 of State no doubt obtained from ofificial sources, 
 is absolutely without foundation. Three magistrates 
 were employed to dispose of the criminal cases arising 
 out of these riots — two members of the Indian Civil 
 Service, Mr. Beatson-Bell and Mr. Barniville — the 
 third being a Musalman. After trying some dozens 
 of cases and imprisoning some hundreds of Musalmans, 
 they unanimously found that " the boycott " of English 
 goods "is not the cause of the disturbances," the 
 Musalman magistrate, with honourable impartiality, 
 declaring that "there was not the least provocation 
 for rioting." " The evidence adduced," he stated in 
 one of his judgments, "shows that at about 4 or 
 5 p.m. on the date in question the accused, Habil 
 Sarkar, had read over a notice to a crowd of Musal- 
 mans near the shop of Ramani Saha at DeWanganj, 
 and had told them that the Government and the 
 Nawab Bahadur of Dacca have passed orders to the 
 effect that nobody would be punished for plundering 
 and oppressing the Hindus. Soon after the Kali's 
 image [the statue of a goddess in a Hindu temple] 
 was broken by the Musalmans ; the shops of the 
 
 72 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Hindu traders were also plundered. In some of the 
 shops fire was set to some heaps of papers by the 
 Musalmans for the purpose of searching the shops 
 of the Hindus by the light of the fire. ... In my 
 opinion the witnesses do not make any false state- 
 ments in their evidence." Mr. Barniville, C.S., the 
 Sub- divisional Officer of Jamalpur, in his report on 
 the Melanda Hat riots, finds "that some Musalmans 
 proclaimed by beat of drum that the Government had 
 permitted them to loot the Hindus." In the Hargil- 
 char abduction case against Jani Shaikh and others, 
 Mr. Barniville, in committing the accused persons, 
 remarked " that these outrages were due to the 
 announcement that the Government had permitted 
 the Muhamadans to marry Hindu widows in nika 
 form" — that is, as second wives or concubines. 
 
 The real cause of the riots was undoubtedly the 
 incitements of Mullahs coming from Dacca in March 
 and April, 1907, well supplied with funds. 
 At the same time an inflammatory booklet, J^^^^^j^^ 
 known as the Red Pamphlet, was distri- 
 buted widely. It used every argument that could 
 excite religious passion. It represented the Hindus 
 as "inhuman oppressors" who "have robbed us of 
 honour and wealth," "who degrade us and deprive 
 us of bread. Now they are going to deprive us of 
 very life." The author, a poor man, was identified 
 and confessed his guilt, but he was in no way 
 punished — rightly, perhaps, as he was certainly only 
 the ignorant agent of some person of higher rank. 
 
 Another chief source of trouble was unquestionably 
 a belief amongst the Musalmans that they had the 
 
 73 
 
The Causes of 
 
 local Government at their back The first act of 
 folly was the presence of the two members of the 
 Board of Revenue, next to the Lieutenant- 
 Partiaais. Governor the highest officials in the Pro- 
 vince, at the foundation in Dacca in October, 
 1905, of a Musalman association "to represent 
 Muhamadan views and aspirations in matters social 
 and political." Their action was in disregard of the 
 express orders of Government to all officials to avoid 
 political agitation. Hardly less unwise was the open 
 advertisement in the Government Gazette for Musal- 
 mans to fill certain appointments. The Chief Secretary 
 issued formal instructions to all officers to encourage 
 the selection of candidates of their faith. The 
 Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals advertised for 
 " Musalmans or non- Bengalis " ! The Police Depart- 
 ment acted on the same principle in recruiting con- 
 stables. It seemed, indeed, as if the millennium for 
 Muhamadans was approaching in Eastern Bengal. 
 The misguided men not unnaturally lost their balance 
 and found themselves in jail — several hundreds of 
 them. Such was the natural result of a thoughtless 
 interpretation of Sir Bampfylde Fuller's innocent but 
 unwise simile when he spoke of the Musalman com- 
 munity as his "favourite wife." 
 
 The Musalmans of Eastern Bengal need all the 
 
 consideration of a wise administration. I have spent 
 
 half a dozen years amongst them. They 
 
 Dntaomi. ^""^ converts from the very lowest castes 
 
 of Hindus and extremely ignorant. They 
 
 have long lived on the best terrns with their Hindu 
 
 neighbours, who form the landholding, merchant, 
 
 74 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 schoolmaster, and generally educated and wealthy 
 class. They always shared in Hindu festivals, and 
 ill-will was unknown till Partition came to destroy 
 friendship and social order. 
 
 75 
 
The Causes of 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BAITING THE BENGALI 
 
 Those who like the Bengalis best deplore the fact 
 that a few of them have recently been unwise and 
 
 violent in word and act, but they have 
 Provoked, been cruelly provoked. They certainly 
 
 were not the first to transgress the bounds 
 of moderation. For two years their agitation was 
 conducted with singular good sense. Their meetings 
 were uniformly orderly and their speeches invariably 
 loyal to the King-Emperor, even when most hostile 
 to the local administration. It was not till after a 
 temple was desecrated and their women outraged 
 that a really seditious spirit began to dominate a 
 portion of the Bengali Press. 
 
 Dr. Lefroy, the English Bishop of Lahore, as 
 became a dignitary of a Christian Church, protested 
 
 last August against the offensive language 
 Vm^us ^" which the English Press in India has 
 
 recently written of the educated class of 
 Indians. " Those of us," he said, " who are, or have 
 been, at all closely in touch with the class in question 
 know for ourselves with perfect certainty that they 
 are very far indeed from being disloyal ; but we 
 know, too, that the strain which is being put on their 
 
 76 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 loyalty at the present time by language of the kind 
 to which I refer, and its inevitable effect in wounding 
 and alienating them is very great indeed." Mr. 
 Morley, at Arbroath in October, recalling the well- 
 known statement that " No one ever ate at Sir 
 Henry Lawrence's table without learning to think 
 more kindly of the natives," added : " India is per- 
 haps the one country — bad and overbearing manners 
 are very disagreeable in all countries — India is the 
 only country where bad and overbearing manners 
 are a political crime." About the same time the 
 Standard, the London Conservative journal, said : 
 " If we could infuse an atmosphere of better manners 
 into the English community as a whole, we would 
 do more to strengthen the bonds that unite the mass 
 of the people to us than by any enlargements of the 
 Legislative Councils." 
 
 The practice of speaking and writing disparagingly 
 of the people of India is an old sin of a certain 
 undesirable class of Englishmen. The 
 
 Warren 
 
 great Warren Hastings, who spent many Hastings's 
 years of his life in Bengal, protested 
 against it a hundred years ago in these words : — 
 
 " I affirm that this description of them [that the people of 
 India were in a state of moral turpitude] is untrue and wholly 
 unfounded. They are gentle, benevolent, more susceptible to 
 gratitude for kindness shown them than prompted to vengeance 
 for wrongs inflicted, and as exempt from the worst properties 
 of human passion as any people on the face of the earth." 
 
 Sir John Malcolm bore testimony to the fact that 
 "the people of India are brave, generous, and 
 humane, and their truth is as remarkable as their 
 
 77 
 
The Causes of 
 
 courage." Another great Indian administrator, Sir 
 Thomas Munro, records: — 
 
 " The general practice of hospitality and charity amongst 
 them, and above all a treatment of the female sex full of con- 
 fidence, respect, and delicacy, are signs which denote a civilised 
 people. The Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe, 
 and if civiUsation is to become an article of trade betwreen the 
 two countries, I am convinced that this country will gain by the 
 import of cargo." 
 
 These were the men who built up the great Empire 
 that some of their descendants seem inclined to 
 deface. There are still many such Englishmen in 
 India, and it is they, and not the ill-mannered Im- 
 perialists, who still maintain the name of England as 
 a symbol of justice and humanity. 
 
 I would not quote the following passages but that 
 
 they have, unhappily, appeared widely in the Indian 
 
 Press, both English and vernacular. In 
 
 ''^IS^is!^ fact, I have taken them as cuttings out of 
 
 Indian journals. A retired Madras official 
 
 recently published a book entitled " India and its 
 
 Problems." The following extract from it has gone 
 
 the round of the native Press :— 
 
 " In this [Hindu] faith there is an absolute divorce between 
 reUgion and morality. Modesty, as we understand it, the 
 Hindus know not. Their religion does not limit a married man 
 to exterior decency, to say nothing of conjugal fidelity. The 
 native conception of the relation of the sexes is merely animal. 
 Love in the sense which it bears in the Western world is un- 
 known in Hindu life." 
 
 I am glad to say that Indian journals also reproduced 
 the admirable comment of the Saturday Review, that— 
 
 78 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 " It is an astonishing thing that the author's years of residence 
 in India have not given him a better insight into the true 
 character of a people vi^ho are singularly rich in domestic 
 virtues, gentle and humane in their social relations, and pre- 
 eminent in their filial piety." 
 
 The best and the most Christian comment, how- 
 ever, is that of lh& Bengali: "Father! forgive him, 
 for he knows not what he says." 
 
 It is particularly, however, on the heads of the 
 
 Bengalis that the storm of vituperation has burst. I 
 
 will not quote minor journals. The Times 
 
 , , ... , , Vituperation 
 
 has been promment m these attacks, and tytte 
 I would ask this leading journal to re- '""^^s-" 
 member that it injures not only itself by the violence 
 of its political articles, but that it does an almost 
 irremediable wrong to the British Empire when it 
 insults the religions and the womenfolk of subject 
 peoples. In an article of the Times of the 13th of 
 last September, entitled " The Well Springs of 
 Sedition in India," it wrote : "If we want to under- 
 stand the true significance of the political movement 
 it is necessary to study the religious and moral 
 atmosphere in which it is developed." It then goes 
 on to refer to Mr. J. C. Oman's recent book on the 
 chief religions of India, and arrives at the conclusion 
 that the motive power behind the Bengali leaders 
 who oppose the partition of their country is to be 
 sought in " the ancient and grim superstitions of their 
 race and the demoralising tyranny of Indian social 
 laws." It next proceeds in its literary supplement 
 of the same date to quote largely from Mr. Oman's 
 work, the quotations being the most offensive to 
 
 19 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Hindus that can be found in the volume, I will not 
 defile my pages by reproducing their uncleanness ; it 
 is enough to say that they describe the religion of 
 the Bengali Hindus as generally obscene, and that 
 at their chief festivals they " abandon themselves with 
 the sensuality of their race" to "licentiousness and 
 lewdness" — a statement which I know, after fifteen 
 years lived amongst them, to be shamelessly false. 
 " Another London Conservative journal of great 
 authority allows itself to write of the Bengali leaders 
 Abuse of ^^ ^^^ following Style : " Among recent 
 Indian writers on India, one after another testifies 
 to the fact that the more bloody, sensual, 
 and degraded aspects of Hinduism flourish particularly 
 in Bengal, on behalf of which such extravagant pre- 
 tensions to the hegemony of an unwilling and un- 
 friendly India are put forward with such confidence 
 by the Congress Party, which draws from that pro- 
 vince its intellectual, and probably its pecuniary, 
 strength." I am glad to say that the Pioneer, the 
 principal English journal in India, points out that 
 the majority of the leaders in Indian agitation are 
 members of the Theistic societies, " whose ethics 
 are singularly like those of the Christian religion, 
 which the founders of these sects have carefully 
 studied." The editor of the most seditious journal in 
 Calcutta was a Catholic and for a time a missionary 
 of that faith. He recently died in prison. 
 
 The Times has outdone even its own folly in 
 attempting to defend the outrages on Hindus in 
 Eastern Bengal by referring to the very numerous 
 victims' of rape as "a small number of young 
 
 80 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Hindu widows, who willingly acceded to abduction 
 to escape the degradation to which their own creed 
 subjects them." The word " willingly " ^ 
 covers an intolerable charge.and its answer "infamotts" 
 has come back hot and fierce from Calcutta 
 in the following tirade of the Hindu newspaper with 
 the largest circulation in India : — 
 
 " Not satisfied with having thrown dirt at the religion of the 
 Hindus, the Times publishes an infamous libel on the character 
 of Hindu widows, which has been republished in a still more 
 offensive form by a disreputable Anglo-Indian journal here. No 
 Indian, whether Hindu or Muhamadan, likes the name of his 
 womenfolk to be taken in vain by profane tongues, and will 
 never tolerate their being slandered by foul-mouthed journalists. 
 We ask the jackals of the British and Anglo-British Press to put 
 a curb on their tongues, otherwise they may rouse dangerous 
 passions in our people. Go on with your miserable trade of 
 lying and slandering, we will soon learn to treat your libels 
 with such contempt as they deserve ; but spare our reUgion and 
 womankind. Even your wretched methods of political con- 
 troversy need not take you on to such delicate ground." 
 
 As a matter of fact her celibacy is the glory of a 
 Hindu widow. 
 
 I would not trouble my readers with all this mad 
 folly, but I have lived over a quarter of a century in 
 India, and I warn the English people that ^ „ 
 
 o _ r r The Oraveat 
 
 if the attitude tojwards Hinduism adopted Danger of 
 by the Times and other journals is not 
 utterly repudiated by all Englishmen, whether con- 
 nected with the Government or not, we shall be 
 brought face to face with a passion of anger that will 
 shake this Empire to its foundations. It is the most 
 pressing danger in India to-day. 
 
 8i F 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Another form of insult to the Bengalis is to speak of 
 them as " feeble, cowardly, wanting in manly vigour," 
 &c. A most respected evening London 
 srt F^taJL Conservative journal recently asserted that 
 " the Bengali is an object of contempt and 
 hatred to the more virile races." This is entirely 
 inaccurate. Bengalis hold positions of influence and 
 authority at the courts of most of the Indian princes, 
 and this is one of the many facts that render the 
 outraging of Bengali feeling a grave political danger, 
 Hindus throughout the whole of India sympathise 
 with them. Sir Sayyid Ahmad, the most dis- 
 tinguished Musalman India produced last century, 
 said in 1884 at Lahore: — 
 
 " I assure you that the BengaUs are the only people in our 
 country whom we can properly be proud of, and it is only due 
 to them that knowledge, liberty, and patriotism are progressing 
 in our country. I can truly say that they are the head and 
 crown of all the communities of Hindustan." 
 
 As to want of manliness, I have known a team of 
 young Bengali gentlemen at Calcutta defeat the team 
 of a British regiment at football. Last year the 
 Bengali Athletic Club met the English Football Club 
 at the same game and again won the match. Young 
 Bengalis during the recent agitation have acted often 
 foolishly and violently, but they certainly did not show 
 want of courage. Their conduct has been justly 
 blamed, but it is very, doubtful if the young men of 
 any nation would have behaved more peacefully 
 when, not to mention outrages on their religion and 
 women, they believed that the honour and the 
 integrity of their nation were assailed. 
 
 82 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A REAL HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 
 
 England has done two great things for India. It 
 has maintained peace and it has given her justice, and 
 of these two benefits the latter is the greater. 
 
 T • • 1 /• 1 1 • Even- 
 
 Justice IS the corner-stone of the arch in handed 
 
 Indian Government. That the High Court 
 of Calcutta still maintains the highest ideals of even- 
 handed justice will be seen from' the following notes 
 on five cases supplied to me by Mr. H. E. A. Cotton, 
 of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law and Advocate of 
 the High Court at Calcutta. 
 
 (i) Knowing how intense was the feeling in Eastern 
 Bengal against Partition, the most elementary states- 
 manship would have suggested patience in 
 dealing with a people who were, not un- "aeg&v- 
 naturally, irritated. It would have been wise 
 to give them some opportunities of petitioning and 
 appealing, so long as order was maintained. Sir 
 Bampfylde Fuller, unfortunately, took an opposite 
 view, and more unfortunately the officials under his 
 government employed means, which were clearly 
 illegal, to suppress public meetings and all forms of 
 public protest. It assists in this connection to recall 
 the statement of Mr. Rees, M.P. — no friend of the' 
 
 83 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Bengali — in the House of Commons on the 26th of 
 February, 1906, when he said that the "strong public 
 feeling in Bengal against Partition was expressed in 
 a legitimate manner in the Press and at public meet- 
 ings." Military police, usually Gurkhas, were drafted 
 into towns where meetings were being held, and 
 it is alleged they used unnecessary violence. At 
 Serajgunge a large number of complaints — about 
 thirty — were laid by Bengali gentlemen of good 
 position against the police for assaults and ill-usage. 
 At Burisal also several similar charges were brought. 
 They were recorded by a subordinate official, and then 
 summarily rejected by the District Magistrate, sum- 
 mons being refused and no investigation made. One 
 of these cases was taken on appeal before the High 
 Court of Calcutta, which declared the action of the 
 magistrate "in contravention of the law," and "clearly 
 illegal." The judges also commented on his dismiss- 
 ing the complaint "sitting in his private room, without 
 giving the complainant or his pleader an opportunity 
 of being heard. This was also improper." 
 
 (ii) On the 14th of November, 1905, barely a 
 month after the Partition was effected, the Magistrate 
 
 of Rungpur, one of the severed districts, 
 ^^ii^te." issued an order directing that twenty-five 
 
 of the leading inhabitants of the town should 
 be enrolled as special constables, under Section 17 of 
 the Police Act — a provision of the law which contem- 
 plates a condition of grave public disorder and rioting, 
 with which the ordinary police is unable to cope. As a 
 matter of fact no disturbance or breach of the peace of 
 any kind had taken place for months, but there had 
 
 84 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 been meetings, perfectly orderly, protesting against 
 Partition. These gentlemen consisted of a barrister, 
 a number of pleaders and landholders, including the 
 chairman of the local municipality. They were 
 required to carry batons and badges, and to attend 
 at the police lines every morning in order to practise 
 drill and the proper way of saluting superior police 
 officers! Some of them were required to leave their 
 homes and live in the police lines under the command 
 of a head constable. In India the law compels any 
 person, on whom the magistrate may fix, to serve as 
 a special constable, whilst in England the citizen 
 undertakes this duty as a volunteer. 
 
 This matter was also taken before the High Court 
 at Calcutta, and at the same time a notice of action 
 against the District Superintendent of Police 
 was served, claiming Rs. 10,000 for illegal rs. 10,000 
 appointment as special constables, and for *^'^^®^- 
 the insult and humiliation involved. The very next 
 day the District Magistrate informed all these special 
 constables that they were released from duty as their 
 appointment " had made the town comparatively quiet 
 and there was now no immediate apprehension of the 
 breaking of the law ! " They were, however, required 
 to hold themselves in readiness, and forbidden to leave 
 Rungpur without permission. 
 
 The High Court made short work of all these 
 illegalities. Mr. Hill, the English barrister who 
 appeared for the Bengalis, said that "there 
 could be no greater indignity for these Greater 
 gentlemen than to force them to practise ^' 
 
 the goose step and salute the head constable whenever 
 
 85 
 
The Causes of 
 
 he ordered them to do so." These facts, he added, 
 "amply justify the opinion that these appointments 
 were not made for the purpose of the Act, but for the 
 purpose of illegal punishment." The Chief Justice, 
 Sir Francis Maclean, before whom this case came, let 
 drop a very strong hint that the Government of 
 Eastern Bengal would be acting in its own best 
 interests if it withdrew from further proceedings. 
 This hint was taken, and the Advocate-General 
 announced that the Government would proceed no 
 further in the matter. 
 
 (iii) These two attempts to interfere with the 
 undoubted right of public meeting, if orderly, might 
 
 have warned Sir Bampfylde Fuller to abstain 
 AwaStod. f^'O"^ further vagaries. In April, 1906, a 
 
 Conference was assembled at Burisal, Mr. 
 Abdul Rasul, a Muhamadan barrister, and B.C.L. 
 of Oxford, being in the chair, and Mr. Surendranath 
 Banerjea the principal speaker. The magistrate, 
 "under orders of Government," issued a prescript 
 forbidding the raising of the cry " Bande Mataram " 
 (Hail to the Motherland), or the forming of a pro- 
 cession. Both orders being of doubtful legality, the 
 delegates, five hundred in number, all of good social 
 position and many elderly men, proceeded to walk to 
 the hall of meeting. They had hardly started when 
 suddenly, without warning or provocation, a determined 
 attack was made on them from behind by the police, 
 who were armed with quarter-staffs, six feet long. 
 Some of the delegates were felled to the ground, and 
 several severely beaten. When these men afterwards 
 applied to the District Magistrate for inquiry into 
 
 86 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 these assaults, their complaints, made formally in 
 Court, were summarily rejected. Mr. Banerjea was 
 arrested and placed before the Magistrate, to whom he 
 protested against the treatment to which he had been 
 subjected. This protest was treated as a contempt of 
 court, and he was fined Rs. 200. He was then fined 
 another Rs. 200 for taking part in a procession without 
 a licence. He had asked for an adjournment in order 
 to obtain legal assistance and produce witnesses in 
 his defence, but the application was peremptorily 
 refused. 
 
 An appeal was made to the Sessions Judge of the 
 district, who quashed the conviction for taking part 
 in an illegal procession. Even Bengalis 
 can walk through the streets of their own ve^bauy/* 
 towns. Some strange revelations, however, 
 attended the hearing of the case, the most remarkable 
 being that the Police Superintendent admitted that 
 the warrant for the arrest of Mr. Banerjea had been 
 prepared and placed in the hands of the police before 
 his arrival at Burisal, without the lodging of any 
 complaint and before any offence could have been 
 committed. The Sessions Judge upheld the convic- 
 tion for contempt of court, whereupon a motion was 
 made to the High Court at Calcutta, which held that 
 no contempt had been committed, that the Magistrate's 
 proceedings were illegal, and further condemned the 
 Sessions Judge for introducing irrelevancies into his 
 decision and basing it upon matters outside the 
 record. In commenting on this case the Times of 
 India, an Anglo-Indian journal, observed: "The 
 High Court's judgment in Mr. Banerjea's case is 
 
 87 
 
The Causes of 
 
 unanswerable. The Buri^al authorities blundered 
 very badly in ordering the dispersal of the Con- 
 ference, and another bad blunder was the making 
 out of the warrant before Mr. Banerjea's arrival." 
 Sir Bampfylde Fuller resigned his appointment as 
 Lieutenant-Governor, and it cannot be said that he 
 brought a very judicial mind to his responsible office. 
 It is a serious matter when the Executive Govern- 
 ment breaks the laws it exists to maintain. 
 
 (iv) It became, however, necessary for the High 
 Court to give the Government of Eastern Bengal 
 
 another and severer lesson. At the begin- 
 °*Looted!*^* ning of March, 1907, Nawab SalimuUah of 
 
 Dacca, began what was intended to be a 
 series of counter-meetings in favour of Partition. He 
 commenced — and ended — at Comilla, the chief town 
 of another severed district. A large procession of 
 Musalmans was formed to escort him through the 
 town, without any opposition from the police. Its 
 members, however, acted in a very different manner 
 from the Hindus of Burisal, whose meeting had been 
 broken up with blameworthy violence. They had 
 not gone far when they began to assault Hindus and 
 loot Hindu shops. On the following evening another 
 Muhamadan procession paraded the streets, and again 
 took to plundering the houses of Hindus. Some one 
 fired a shot-gun, with the result that one of the 
 Muhamadan processionists was killed. On the in- 
 formation of a Musalman three men were arrested, 
 a Hindu constable, a Hindu sub-inspector of police, 
 and a Hindu attorney practising in the criminal 
 courts of Comilla. The case came on for trial before 
 
 88 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 the Sessions Judge of Comilla, and the three men 
 were convicted — the constable being sentenced to 
 death and the sub-inspector of police and the attorney 
 to transportation for life. 
 
 An appeal was in due course proffered before the 
 High Court of Calcutta, and the conviction and all 
 the sentences set aside. The judges, Mr. „„„ , 
 
 T . ,,. J & ' "Utterly 
 
 Justice Mitter and Mr. Justice Fletcher, onreuawe 
 
 1 , , Evidence." 
 
 observed that — 
 
 (a) "The learned Sessions Judge has ignored the 
 most elementary principles for sifting evidence." 
 
 {6) His " findings of fact rest on utterly insufficient 
 and unreliable evidence." 
 
 (c) The statements of the chief witness were un- 
 corroborated and full of inconsistencies. "This want 
 of veracity displayed by the man was patent, and it 
 was surprising that the judge should have placed any 
 reliance upon him." 
 
 (d) " The accused sub-inspector of police \Vas 
 clearly implicated because he was a police officer 
 fl&««^ Ais duty at a troublesome time, and therefore 
 rendered himself unpopular to a large number of 
 Muhamadans of a low class." 
 
 (g) " Whoever fired the gun was certainly actuated 
 by a desire to protect property from the Muhamadan 
 rioters, and not with the intention of killing anybody." 
 
 (/) The most important comment of the High 
 Court was in these words : — 
 
 " The method of the learned judge in dealing with the testi- 
 mony of the witnesses by dividing them into two classes — 
 Hindus and Musalmans — and accepting the evidence of one 
 class and rejecting that of the other, is open to severe criticism. 
 
 89 
 
The Causes of 
 
 The learned judge ought to have directed his mind solely to 
 the evidence which had been given before him, and to have 
 excluded from his consideration all preconceived sympathies 
 with either sections of the population." 
 
 This case created great excitement, and the follow- 
 ing studiously moderate comment of the Bengali 
 states the most serious aspect of affairs in 
 
 "Preconceived ■, ,. i 
 
 Sympathies." India at the present time : — 
 
 " These proceedings serve to reveal the abnormal condition 
 of things which the Partition of Bengal has created in the 
 new Province. The ancient traditions of even-handed justice 
 between class and class and race and race have disappeared, 
 and even judges, carried away by the prevailing official feeling, 
 sit upon the bench and discharge their duties with ' precon- 
 ceived sympathies.' These ' sympathies,' which are not of the 
 right sort, are universal — they are a part of the official creed of 
 the new Province and taint the fountains of justice. This is, 
 indeed, an exceedingly serious matter. If the impression were 
 to go forth that Hindus cannot expect justice in the new Pro- 
 vince, it would do more than anything else that we can think 
 of to weaken the hold of the Government upon the vast Hindu 
 population of the Empire. In these days of rapid intercourse 
 and of free exchange of ideas between Province and Province, 
 the grievance of the Hindus of the new Province would be 
 shared by their co-religionists throughout the Empire. The 
 policy of divide and rule is the feeblest of all policies, and 
 history tells us that it recoils upon those who practise it." 
 
 (v) The last case that requires notice is amusing 
 
 rather than tragic. Mr. Rai, a leading lawyer, was 
 
 found guilty about the same time, March, 
 
 AB^ifatton?'^ 1907, of delivering a "seditious" speech, 
 
 the gravamen of the charge against him 
 
 being that he had advocated " Swaraj." On appeal 
 
 to the High Court it was pointed out that this term 
 
 90 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 consisted of two words — Swa meaning self, and raj 
 meaning government. Mr. Justice Fletcher said 
 "unhesitatingly" that such a term would cover the 
 form of administration in all our Colonies, and " that 
 it was a legitimate aspiration of the people, and there 
 was no harm in advocating it." The order of the 
 magistrate, a Muhamadan gentleman, was accordingly 
 reversed. 
 
 My only comment is that Parliament will be wilfully 
 blind if it follows Mr. Morley's advice not to " subject 
 Indian Administration to the supervision 
 and criticism of the House of Commons." ^^^^^^^^ 
 I fear he will come along some day to ask 
 the British people to pay the bill such " administra- 
 tion " always costs. 
 
 91 
 
The Causes of 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "SEDITION" IN THE PUNJAB 
 
 " What ^must have been the state of things which 
 can compel cultivators, proverbially patient and long- 
 suffering, accustomed to more or less of ill-usage and 
 injustice at all times, to redress their wrongs by murder 
 and in defiance of an ignominious death to themselves ? 
 How must their sense of justice have been violated ? 
 How must they have been bereft of all hope of redress 
 from law or Government, before their patient and peace- 
 ful natures could be roused to the point of desperation 
 required for such a deed ?" — Sir George Wingate on the 
 Bombay Riots of 1877. 
 
 During the spring of last year England was shocked 
 by accounts of serious rioting in several of the chief 
 
 towns of the Punjab — Lahore, Delhi and 
 " Feifto^ Rawalpindi. The information came in the 
 
 form of excited telegrams, followed by 
 statements, which ought to have been reliable, in 
 the House of Commons by the Secretary of State, 
 indicating a great outbreak of sedition. As to the 
 actual facts, the following passages from the Con- 
 servative Pioneer of the 17th of May last may help 
 the timorous : — 
 
 " There are different kinds of mobs," it wrote — " dangerous 
 and murderous mobs, and mobs which are only mischievous. 
 It is the latter sort that has been making disturbances in the 
 
 92 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 Punjab. These incidents have been unsatisfactorily numerous, 
 but such seriousness as they have is due rather to the frequency 
 with which the rabble have succeeded in taking the authorities 
 at a disadvantage than to any alarming features that have been 
 revealed. On the contrary the temper, not only of what are 
 called the respectable classes, but of the great bulk of the towns- 
 people affected, has been entirely reassuring. Indignation and 
 regret have been expressed universally at the doings of a small 
 section of riff-raff and irresponsible youths." 
 
 " If we wish," this sensible journal continued, " to understand 
 the true lesson of these disturbances we must get them into 
 focus and view them in the right light and not in a distorted 
 form. We think it is absurd to regard them as organised riots, 
 premeditated and planned to bring about a collision with the 
 civil authorities ; we cannot by any stretch of description 
 portray the mob as animated by active sedition, by the wish 
 to injure, maim and kill, and carrying the secret sympathy and 
 support of masses of the townspeople. All the evidence of all 
 these occurrences in the Punjab shows that there were nothing 
 more than disorderly rabbles to deal with, rabbles growing 
 aggressive and mischievous as the chances were given them, 
 and scattering in panic the moment there was a reappearance 
 of the forces of law and order." 
 
 Such "town riots " are much too frequent in Indian 
 cities, which always hold a large floating population of 
 bad characters. They will never do much injury to 
 the British Empire, but are quite useful to the gentle- 
 men of the Jingo Press, who find in "sedition" the 
 simplest and surest means of hardening the English- 
 man's heart against reform. 
 
 I will not discuss farther the character of the dis- 
 turbances. It is more useful to try and ascertain their 
 origin. Mr. Morley insisted again and again 
 in the House of Commons that they were "^"ted.*^ 
 due to the preaching of " open sedition." 
 Again and again in the House of Commons the small 
 
 93 
 
The Causes of 
 
 body of ex-officials of the Indian Civil Service, who 
 generally know what they are talking about, assured 
 the Secretary of State that the cause, and the sole 
 cause, of the disorder was agrarian ; in other words, 
 that the people of the Punjab, both Sikhs and Musal- 
 mans, were intensely incensed by continued enhance- 
 ments of the land tax. Mr. Morley firmly refused 
 to accept this explanation, and in the course of his 
 Budget speech last July said : " I hope those who 
 take up the position that this was an agrarian move- 
 ment and not a political movement in the Punjab will 
 see that the facts are against any such contention." 
 (Opposition cheers.) In support of his argument he 
 adduced nothing but an ex parte report from the 
 head of the administration, which is blamed by the 
 people of the Punjab for resisting and rejecting all 
 their petitions. 
 
 Fifteen years ago, Mr, S. S. Thorburn, Financial 
 
 Commissioner to the Government of the Punjab, 
 
 declared, as the result of a house-to-house 
 
 " Ruined 
 
 Beyond inquiry, that over large areas the peasantry 
 was " already ruined beyond redemption " ; 
 the chief cause assigned by him being " borrowing 
 from moneylenders to pay land revenue." There 
 have been two minor famines in the Punjab in the 
 past ten years. During the past five years the 
 Punjab has been swept by plague, and plague finds 
 its victims amongst the poor, ill-nourished, and 
 physically feeble. Last year 52,000 died in a single 
 week. The Musalman community alone has lost 
 half a million. In spite of these disasters, far from 
 there being any remission of land tax, the revenue 
 
 94 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 derived from it has increased from ;^ 1,500,000 in 
 1891 to ;^i, 925,000 in 1906, or by 30 per cent, in 
 fifteen years. This is a state of things that cries 
 aloud for investigation. 
 
 The Daily News of Calcutta is quite as Tory in 
 its proclivities as its London namesake is Liberal, 
 and, in fact, was founded as a kind of 
 
 ' , . "Qreed the 
 
 Government organ. In its issue of the Basis of 
 
 1 r 1 TiT ■ Discontent." 
 
 22 nd of last May it wrote : — 
 
 " It appears now that the discontent in the Punjab has its 
 origin in a perfectly reasonable and tangible grievance — the 
 increase of the Land Revenue assessment. It is the fetish of 
 some ignorant minds that the Permanent Settlement was a 
 mistake, and Lord Curzon was an exponent of that idea. As 
 a matter of fact the increase of revenue obtained by a reassess- 
 ment is trifling compared with the heartburning and discontent 
 occasioned by a resettlement, and the sooner this simple fact is 
 understood by the Government of India the better. The only 
 way to ensure real tranquillity is to ensure property and to give 
 people a chance. The Indian system of rack-rental deprives 
 people of that chance, and breeds discontent. The best thing 
 in the Punjab is for the Government to go into the assessment 
 matter again, and recognise that liberality is the soul of content 
 and greed the basis of discontent." 
 
 As a Liberal I must say that it does anger me to 
 see a sincere Liberal like Mr. Morley, a prophet of 
 the Liberal faith, hoodwinked as he has been. I 
 challenge an inquiry into the "sedition" by any 
 Commission or any body, by the House of Lords 
 — even by any three or half-dozen prominent English- 
 men. I am convinced that it would establish the 
 absence of sedition and the presence of a great 
 discontent due to rack-renting. 
 
 95 
 
The Causes of 
 
 The Punjab peasantry used every means to obtain 
 
 a fair hearing from their rulers. At their meetings 
 
 The s *^^y chanted a doggerel song that tells its 
 
 of the own tale. A literal translation was pub- 
 
 easantry. jj^j^^j -^^ ^^^ Pioneer on the 7th of June, 
 
 and runs thus : — 
 
 " In vain did we send petitions to the Government, 
 
 All our cries have been fruitless ; 
 Our words were valued as chaff, 
 
 The Government did not even accidentally think of us, 
 And paid no attention to our sufferings. 
 
 Our intention viras to fall at the door of the King, 
 To lay our grievances before him ; 
 
 Our song is the strain of a sorrowful chord." 
 
 There is not much sedition in this rather pitiful 
 ditty ; in fact, there is a good deal of humble loyalty. 
 Anyhow, it proves that the agitation was entirely 
 agrarian. 
 
 That the Secretary of State should have so positively 
 denied the existence of agrarian discontent is the more 
 remarkable as the Times, on the 27th of 
 *BteK** May, only two months before, had published 
 an authoritative article on " Riots and Un- 
 rest in the Punjab," in which it described the great 
 impolicy of the Punjab Government in administering 
 and legislating for the extensive reclamations of land 
 known as the Canal Colonies. It is impossible to 
 praise too highly the high engineering skill of the 
 men who made the great canals of the Punjab. They 
 are a real work of progressive civilisation and an un- 
 mixed blessing to the Punjab, if only the tax-gatherer 
 and the bureaucrat could have been kept at a distance. 
 
 96 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 The demands of land revenue were excessive, the 
 irrigation rates still more excessive, and the rules 
 and regulations of the most exasperating kind. The 
 colonisation officers endeavoured to rule two millions 
 of people, cultivating three millions of acres, as if they 
 were dealing with a little model farm. The Pioneer 
 sensibly remarked that a poker-backed Prussian official 
 was mild in comparison with these canal bureaucrats. 
 
 The tenants resented all this harassing interference ; 
 so the Puniab Government in its wisdom 
 
 •' ... "The Injustice 
 
 brought in a Colonisation Bill, to force all of the 
 its silly fads down the throats of a sturdy 
 peasantry by means of fines and imprisonment. 
 The London Times tells us that — 
 
 " Feelings of fierce resentment spread fast, mass meetings 
 were held and wild words were uttered. This was not all 
 factious, for the feelings spread beyond the colony. Many of 
 the English officers of Government, up and down the Province, 
 protested against the injustice of the measure which was contem- 
 plated. The Punjab Government listened to the agitation, and 
 very properly explained their position. The Bill was altered in 
 sub-committee, and everything new and objectionable was cut 
 out. The Bill was then passed in the local Legislative Council, 
 all the Indian members voting against it." 
 
 As a matter of fact, much that was new and 
 objectionable was left in, and Lord Minto wisely 
 withheld his assent to the projected law. The Times 
 suggestively records that " the wisest chief in the 
 Punjab, after the Bill was passed, said, with a shake 
 of his head, ' The Government should keep faith with 
 its children.' " The children would have got nothing, 
 but that they lost their tempers and violence was 
 
 97 G 
 
The Causes of 
 
 feared — an old story in our administration of con- 
 quered countries. 
 
 It may be useful to explain how it was that the 
 Sikh regiments very quickly came to take a keen 
 
 interest in this dispute. The policy of the 
 i^iin^s. Government — a wise one — was to use the 
 
 colonies both as a means of rewarding old 
 soldiers and as a recruiting ground in the future. 
 The colonists were principally Sikhs. The Sikh 
 soldiers at home on leave were naturally affected 
 by the prevailing discontent, and carried the com- 
 plaints of their relatives to their officers, who pro- 
 perly informed the military authorities at Simla. A 
 mischievous leaflet was also circulated amongst the 
 troops, but it is ridiculous to describe it as an incite- 
 ment to mutiny. It is widely believed in India that 
 it was Lord Kitchener's personal interference that 
 secured the rejection of the fatuous Colonisation 
 Bill. This wise act was immediately followed by 
 the reduction of both the land tax and the water 
 rate to half the absurd amounts to which they had 
 been screwed up. The capital of severi millions 
 sterling invested in the Punjab canals yielded in 
 1 906- 1 907 the large net profit of loj per cent., whilst 
 in the case of the Chenab Canal it rose to the extra- 
 ordinary and unhealthy figure of nearly 22 per cent. 
 It was in the Chenab colonies that the bitterest 
 discontent existed. 
 
 This was all a blow to the Punjab Government 
 hard to be borne, and it is only human that it should 
 be glad to save its face. It did not discountenance 
 the outcry about " sedition," " mutiny," &c., which 
 
 98 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 created extreme alarm. All the Europeans, including 
 four venerable judges of the High Court, enlisted 
 as privates in the local volunteers, although 
 
 To Save its 
 Face. 
 
 there were twenty thousand British troops 
 within easy reach. Panic alone could 
 justify the arrest of the six lawyers and the de- 
 portation of Lala Lajpat Rai, against whom from 
 that day to this no evidence of sedition in word or 
 act has been forthcoming. Sir Henry Cotton, M.P., 
 and Mr. Mackarness, M.P,, have again and again 
 asked for its production. A youth named Ajit 
 Singh, twenty-three years of age, undoubtedly talked 
 silly treason, but, as I will show later, the older and 
 responsible men did all they could to restrain him. 
 
 These disorders in the Punjab led to the most 
 remarkable State trial that has ever taken place in 
 India. Six members of the Bar, three , „, , „ . , 
 
 . . ' A state Tnal 
 
 bemg barristers of the London Inns of and a 
 Court, were put on their trial at Rawal- 
 pindi for inciting the subjects of the King-Emperor 
 to rebellion. These men were arrested early in May, 
 1907, and were kept in prison, bail being refused, for 
 five months, at the end of which time they were 
 released, and a few days after acquitted of all 
 complicity in sedition. The case entirely depended 
 on the evidence of a number of Musalman witnesses 
 of the humblest class, and of a Musalman sub-inspec- 
 tor of police. The trying Judge, Mr. Martineau, found 
 that " their statements appear to be highly 
 
 . •"■ *• o y "Improbable 
 
 improbable and unreliable, and need no ana 
 discussion." The Musalman sub-inspector 
 deposed that he had taken notes of the speeches 
 
 99 
 
The Causes of 
 
 made by the lawyers, but admitted that he had 
 destroyed them. Four of the witnesses sent to 
 the District Magistrate of Rawalpindi what pur- 
 ported to be verbatim reports of the speeches, but 
 the Judge rejected them as manifestly concocted. 
 The four letters all bore the same postmark — 
 5.30 a.m. on the 29th April. Their oral evidence 
 was "conflicting and unreliable." 
 
 The following extracts from Mr. Martineau's judg- 
 "Untrust- ffient speak for themselves : — 
 
 worthy and 
 
 MaJioiottB." ^j^ „ J gj^^ ^j^g^ ^^^ ^j^g evidence as to Hansraj 
 
 and Gurdasram having used seditious or inflammatory language 
 at the meeting of the 21st April is entirely untrustworthy." 
 
 (ii) " I have no doubt that a wrong construction has been put 
 upon what Gurdasram said, and it appears to me more probable 
 that the misconstruction was wilful and malicious than that it 
 has arisen from a mistake." 
 
 (iii) " There is also not a particle of evidence to show that 
 Mr. Khazan Sing, Mr. Jankinath, or Lala Mansaram had any- 
 thing to do with the inciting of people in the city or at the 
 railway workshops." 
 
 The most important portions of Mr. Martineau's 
 decision deal with the connection of the 
 Legitimate lawyers with Ajit Singh and the real 
 ^*"'" objects of their speeches. 
 
 " The only other point on which I need touch in connection 
 with the meeting of the 21st April is the question whether the 
 accused expressed approval or disapproval of Ajit's speech. 
 There can be no doubt that his speech was inflammatory, and 
 it is a point against the accused that they allowed him to go on 
 speaking for a considerable time. On the other hand, there is 
 reason to believe that Laid, Hansraj did, as he says, pass notes 
 to Ajit Singh in order to induce him to stop, and ttiat he pulled 
 
 100 
 
Present Discontents in' India 
 
 or tried to pull him down from the table when he was speaking. 
 Gangaram (Prosecution witness No. 6) says he saw Lala Hansraj 
 give a piece of paper to Ajit Singh while the latter was speaking, 
 and also saw him pull Ajit Singh by his clothes." 
 
 The Judge makes it quite clear that the object of 
 the meeting was a thoroughly legitimate one. He 
 said : — 
 
 " Mr. Gurdasram urged the people to appeal to the Govern- 
 ment in regard to the enhancement of the revenue, and we 
 have the important fact that as a result of the Entirely 
 meeting a memorial to His Honour the Lieut.- against 
 Governor regarding the enhanced assessment was Rack-renting, 
 actually drafted. The draft memorial and a synopsis giving 
 the figures for the present and former assessments in different 
 villages were found in Lala Amolakram's house after his arrest. 
 The mere fact of a memorial and synopsis being prepared seems 
 to me to go a long way to discredit the evidence produced in 
 regard to the speeches delivered by the accused. Lala Hansraj 
 and Mr. Gurdasram say that they got up after Ajit Singh had 
 spoken and emphatically repudiated his remarks, and that Ajit 
 Singh got angry and left the meeting. This much appears to 
 me clear, that the object of the accused was that Government 
 should be memorialised on the subject of the grievances or 
 alleged grievances of the zemindars" (landholders). 
 
 It thus appears that six innocent men of position 
 and education, engaged in a just agitation against 
 excessive enhancement of land revenue — 
 increased in the Rawalpindi District from pr^J^j. 
 ;^27,500 annually in 1864 to ;^36,400 in 
 1884 and to ;^45,ooo in 1904 — were kept in jail for 
 one hundred and fifty-three days, bail being refused 
 by the High Court, on "false," "fabricated," and 
 "malicious" evidence. The Hon. Mr. Gokhale, 
 speaking last November face to face with the 
 
 lOI 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Viceroy in the Council Chamber at Simla, made 
 the following outspoken comments on this case and 
 on the deportation of Lajpat Rai : — 
 
 " The whole country was convulsed, and while the Punjab 
 itself was paralysed, in other parts of India even the most 
 level-headed men found it difficult to express themselves with 
 due self-restraint. That a man like Lala Lajpat Rai, loved by 
 thousands, not in his own Province only, a man of high 
 character and of elevated feeling, a keen religious and social 
 reformer, and a poUtical worker who, whatever his faults, 
 worked only in broad daylight, should have been suddenly 
 arrested and deported without trial, this was a proceeding 
 which stunned the people throughout India. 
 
 " And, as regards the Rawalpindi case, what shall I say ? 
 For months the whole country witnessed the spectacle of the 
 venerable Lala Hansraj, a man as incapable of promoting dis- 
 order as any member sitting at this table, with other gentlemen 
 equally respectable, rotting in the lock-up, on a charge of in- 
 citing to violence and conspiring against the Crown. It will be 
 long before the memory of the sufferings of these men is 
 wiped from the public mind. Meanwhile, the country is wait- 
 ing to see how the authorities deal with those who brought 
 these sufferings on them by producing evidence which the try- 
 ing magistrate has pronounced to be most untrustworthy and 
 probably fabricated." 
 
 The whole Punjab "sedition" affair is an ad- 
 ministrative scandal which should make English 
 Liberals hang their heads with shame. 
 "Section." ^7 °"s hope is that now at length the 
 question of land taxation in India will be 
 pushed to the front by every real friend of good 
 government. 
 
 I02 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 RACK-TAXING IN RURAL INDIA 
 
 " The Government assessment does not leave enough 
 food to the cultivator to support himself and his family 
 throughout the year." — Sir William Hunter, K.C.S.I., the 
 Historian of India, in the Viceroy's Council, 1883. 
 
 "There is no more pathetic figure in the British 
 Empire than the Indian peasant. His masters have ever 
 been unjust to him. He is ground until everything has 
 been expressed, except the marrow of his bones." — Mr. 
 Herbert Compton in Indian Life, 1904. 
 
 Lord Lawrence declared in evidence before a Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons that British Rule 
 in India must fall if the agricultural popu- 
 lation becomes our foe. This experienced ""'i)"^ * 
 warning has now for half a century been 
 entirely disregarded. The land revenue of the 
 Empire has, since the establishment of Imperial 
 government in India, increased excessively, and of 
 late years by leaps and bounds. Englishmen wonder 
 why they are at times held up in the Indian Press to 
 public hatred as fiends of injustice. They would 
 themselves allow that their administration has made 
 mistakes, but, surely, no mistake can explain such 
 extreme virulence. There is only one explanation. 
 
 103 
 
The Causes of 
 
 You will generally find that the person who uses such 
 language, or the editor of the journal which prints it, 
 is the son of a peasant or in some way connected 
 with the tenant class in India. He is certainly a 
 man embittered by the intense poverty of a large part 
 of the Indian peasantry. The number of human 
 beings in India who subsist in perennial hunger, usually 
 on one meal a day, was estimated a few years ago by 
 the Pioneer at one hundred millions. 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have discussed the great 
 increase in the burdens on the land in the Punjab, 
 
 which have aroused a passion of ill-will that 
 ^bewS^ inexperienced observers have been unable 
 
 to differentiate from sedition. It is over a 
 quarter of a century since I first attempted to draw 
 the attention of Englishmen to the condition of the 
 agricultural classes in India. The land tax then 
 amounted to ^15,500,000 a year. It is now nearly 
 ;^ 1 9, 500,000, an increase of over 25 per cent. I 
 wrote a pamphlet, entitled "The Ruin of an Indian 
 Province," and in 1880 there was a lengthened debate 
 in the House of Commons on its statements. Parlia- 
 ment and many people in England were prepared to 
 consider them. The great Bombay-Madras Famine 
 of 1877-78, with its five millions of victims, and sub- 
 sequent murderous riots in Bombay, were still fresh 
 in men's minds. A Conservative Government was 
 in power when these calamities and tumults occurred, 
 and it did not refuse an inquiry, to which I shall refer 
 later. I am at present desirous of emphasising the 
 fact that a Liberal Government, in spite of famines 
 and experienced warnings, is still carrying on the 
 
 104 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 same fatal policy of enhancement and even aggra- 
 vating it. The Explanatory Memorandum to the 
 Indian Budget issued last July by the Secretary of 
 State gives at page 12 the total Land Revenue of 
 the Indian Empire collected in 1905-6 as ;^i8, 129,572, 
 and his own budget of land revenue for the following 
 year, 1907-8, as ;^ 19, 545, 200. The increase is 
 ;^i, 41 5,628, or nearly 8 per cent, in twenty-four 
 months — roundly at the rate of 40 per cent, in a single 
 decade. India has cause to appreciate the coming to 
 power of a Liberal Administration. 
 
 A great famine is again devastating the most fertile 
 areas in Upper India. I would venture to draw 
 attention to a warning I wrote five years ago 
 m a chapter on " ramme and iaxation m cause of 
 " The Failure of Lord Curzon," p. 38. ^''°^'- 
 
 " India," I declared, " is rapidly becoming a land steeped in 
 perennial poverty. The evil is fortunately at present confined 
 in its worst form to Southern and Central India, to Bombay, 
 Madras, and the Central Provinces. But the pressure of the 
 land revenue is severe in the North-Western Provinces, in 
 Oudh, and in the Punjab. In spite of bad seasons and bad 
 rainfall they have up to now suffered from true famine only 
 over small areas. Mortality from starvation also has been low. 
 There are not wanting, however, many signs that impoverish- 
 ment, pauperisation in fact, has made much progress. Let us 
 be warned in time by the example of Bombay." 
 
 This latest famine will cost the Indian Government 
 millions of money in relief, and inflict a supreme 
 misery on millions of men, women, and children in 
 " the North-Western Provinces, Oudh and the Pun- 
 jab." A splendid charity is being exercised, and 
 
 los 
 
The Causes of 
 
 Sir John Hewett, the ablest Liutenant- Governor 
 now in India, may be trusted to do all that a wise 
 administrator can to alleviate the horrors of such a 
 calamity. Would it not, however, be statesmanlike 
 for the Secretary of State to investigate the allegation 
 that the taxation on land is the chief cause of famine ? 
 We have not been " warned in time by the 
 example of Bombay." Still it is worth while to 
 
 recall the calamity of 1877, when five 
 adirtS!^ millions of human beings, according to 
 
 the estimates of the Census Department, 
 perished miserably in Bombay and Madras, in spite of 
 a lavish outlay on relief The Government of India 
 is the most charitable institution in the world, but 
 the most pig-headed when its administration or 
 taxation is called in question. It is absolutely un- 
 teachable. Thirty years ago, however, it was wise 
 enough to inquire into the causes of famine and the 
 riots that accompanied it. In Bombay, as now in 
 Upper India, the local officials could find no explana- 
 tion but drought, whilst the riots were due to the 
 wickedness of the peasantry. The happy thought of 
 "Sedition" and " Agitators " had not been invented. 
 It was left to a Liberal administration to evolve this 
 origin of agrarian disorder. A Commission of five 
 members, consisting of a judge, two revenue officials 
 from another Province, and two revenue officials from 
 Bombay, was appointed. The two Bombay officers, 
 though admitting much, were rather apologetic for 
 their own Government. The independent three from 
 other Provinces submitted a majority report of a 
 most startling kind. It proved that there had been 
 
 106 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 ian increase of 30 per cent, in the land-tax in thirty- 
 years. This document is too lengthy and technical 
 for quotation here, whilst my summary of it might 
 not be accepted as impartial. I, therefore, quote the 
 analysis made at the time by the Pioneer, then, 
 as now, the most able English newspaper in India. 
 
 " Of the five'members of the Commission," it wrote, " three " 
 (the independent members), " namely, the judicial and the two 
 North-West members, reply that it (' the final element of 
 distress that broke the peasants' heart ') must be looked for in 
 the revised land revenue assessments, in themselves extrava- 
 gantly heavy" " The arguments of the majority," it continued, 
 "form a grave indictment against the Bombay Revenue Survey. 
 Briefly they may be thus summarised : The enhancements 
 made at- the recent revision were, judging by all known stan- 
 dards, excessive. Viewed in conjunction with the status of 
 those on whom they were imposed they were ruinous. They 
 were framed, finally, for the most part on conjectural and 
 merely arithmetical data, much of which seems wrong. As to 
 the excessiveness of the assessments, it is shown on the Survey 
 figures that the enhancement, as imposed originally, ranged in 
 different talukas (sub-districts) from 33 to 66 per cent. On 
 individual villages it was often doubled ; on individual holdings 
 it was constantly more than doubled. The assessment is 
 judged from its own mouth ; and we find it imposing enhance- 
 ments of 38 per cent, in the face of admitted depression, or 
 forcing 77 per cent, down the throats of the local officers. A 
 more damning indictment was never recoi-ded against a civilised 
 government." 
 
 The Bombay peasant, the Pioneer added, had 
 accepted for many years, "with characteristic patience 
 and silence the yoke of British misgovernment." Sir 
 George Wingate, a distinguished Bombay ofificial, 
 made a similar pathetic reference to the Indian 
 
 107 
 
The Causes of 
 
 peasants' "long-suffering patience," The same is 
 true of the Punjab to-day. 
 
 If we turn to the Madras Presidency we find the 
 same blasting of a people's strength by a merciless 
 
 taxation. There also famine succeeds 
 mouB Increase famine. The land revenue is ever rising, 
 
 and evictions by the State almost exceed 
 belief. Even since the beginning of the present 
 century enhancements of land-tax in Malabar have 
 been as great as 84, 85, and 105 per cent, in different 
 revenue sub-districts. Again I quote from a Con- 
 servative journal, the Englishman, of Calcutta, the 
 foremost newspaper of the capital of India. On 
 February 17, 1880, it wrote: — 
 
 " The late Madras famine has raised the question as to what 
 the Government has done to protect the agriculture of Southern 
 India, in return for the revenue raised from it. On the one 
 hand, there can be no doubt that the Madras revenue has been 
 very greatly increased since India passed to the Crown. In 
 that year, 1858-59, the land revenue of Madras was under 3^^ 
 millions sterling, and its average during the previous five years 
 had been under 3^ millions. In 1876, the year before the late 
 famine, it was 4^ millions. Twenty years of British rule have, 
 therefore, increased the Government demand upon the agricul- 
 ture of Madras by over one million, or one-third of the whole 
 land revenue paid by that Presidency to the Company in 1858. 
 There are not wanting those who affirm that this increased 
 taxation had much to do with the late calamity. The husband- 
 men were less able, according to this view, to bear the strain 
 of bad seasons, in consequence of the enormous increase in the 
 revenue taken from them'' 
 
 A 30 per cent, increase in thirty years brought 
 famine and riot in Bombay. A 33 per cent, increase 
 in twenty years in Madras naturally had no better 
 
 108 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 results. In fifteen years there has been an increase 
 of 30 per cent, in the Punjab, and we are again face 
 to face with riot and tax-caused " sedition." 
 
 I would especially beg every Englishman as a 
 Christian, even as a normally humane human being, 
 to reflect on the following facts describing 
 the unexampled eviction, in a single Pro- ^"^lon. 
 vince, of five-sixths of a million of 
 families or at least four millions of our " fellow- 
 subjects" in eleven years. In 1893 the Hon. Mr. A. 
 Rogers, of the Indian Civil Service and ex-Member 
 of the Bombay Council, writing to the Under- 
 Secretary of State for India stated : — 
 
 " In the eleven years from 1880 to 1890 there were sold by 
 auction for the collection of land revenue the occupancy rights 
 of 1,963,364 acres of land held by 840,713 defaulters, in addi- 
 tion to personal property to the value of Rs.2,965,081. Of the 
 1,963,364 acres, 1,174,143 had to be bought in on the part of the 
 Government for want of bidders, that is to say, very nearly 
 60 per cent, of the land supposed to be fairly and equitably 
 assessed could not find purchasers, and only the balance of 
 779,142 acres was sold. The evils of the farming system in 
 Bombay have been pointed out in my ' History of the Bombay 
 Land Revenue,' but I doubt if that system at its worst could 
 have shown such a spectacle as that of nearly 850,000 ryots 
 (heads of famiUes) in the course of eleven years sold out of 
 about 1,900,000 acres of land." 
 
 Roundly, one-eighth part of the entire agricultural 
 population of the Madras Province was sold out of 
 house and land in little more than a decade. Not only 
 were their farms brought to auction, but their poor 
 personal belongings, their furniture and their cook- 
 ing utensils, their beds and everything but their 
 
 109 
 
The Causes of 
 
 scanty clothes were sold to provide money for ''Im- 
 perial" expenditure. The picture is incomplete till it 
 is remembered that these eleven years of " denudation" 
 immediately followed the terrible famine of 1877-78 
 during which Madras lost three millions of its in- 
 habitants by starvation. The bureaucrats who 
 stolidly committed this stupendous administrative 
 crime, were honest, kindly Englishmen, moved from 
 one district to another every couple of years, working 
 hard and thinking little, mere cogs in the financial 
 machine, just like the worthy placid gentlemen who 
 are to-day ruining the Punjab and its stalwart Sikh 
 population. 
 
 In replying to a question of mine, in April last, Mr. 
 Morley stated that " 50 per cent, of the net assets is 
 
 the ordinary standard of assessment of 
 
 taxof^eS'per ^'^'^^ revenue alone throughout India." 
 
 iS^bted' ^^' assets mean the annual profit, after 
 
 paying the cost of cultivation — the income, 
 in fact, of the farmer. So we have it admitted that 
 the normal land-tax or rent amounts to a 50 per cent, 
 income-tax — ten shillings in the pound. The word 
 "alone" needs explanation. It means that the 
 farmer has, besides his land-tax, many other rates 
 and cesses to pay for roads, police, irrigation, public 
 works, &c. Mr. Morley 's answer suggested that 50 
 per cent, is the higher limit of the, land-tax throughout 
 India ; so a few days later I questioned him definitely 
 in regard to the Central Provinces, giving date and 
 number of the Government of India's order. The 
 reply I received runs thus : "The rule at present in 
 force in the Central Provinces is that the assessment 
 
 no 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 should not be less than 50 per cent, of the assets, and 
 should not exceed 60 per cent. ; but in exceptional 
 cases, if the existing assessment has hitherto exceeded 
 65 per cent, and been paid without difificulty, it is 
 provided that the assessment shall be fixed at 65 per 
 cent." It, therefore, appears that 50 per cent, is the 
 lower limit, and that it may be 65 if it can be paid 
 without difficulty ! We are always assured that the 
 land-tax is light and always paid without difficulty, 
 which perhaps explains the fact that in the Central 
 Provinces over a million people disappeared — died of 
 starvation, between 1891 and igot, as admitted in 
 the Census Report of the latter year. 
 
 The most convincing proof of the fact that more 
 than half his profits is taken from the farmer, is that 
 a very distinguished body of retired Indian 
 officials, including four gentlemen who had ofaCMef 
 been members of the Legislative Councils 
 of the Viceroy or of Governors, and headed by Sir 
 Richard Garth, ex-Chief Justice of the High Court 
 of -Calcutta, petitioned the Secretary of State, on 
 December 20, 1 900, asking that the " Government 
 demand should be limited to 50 per cent, of the value 
 of the net produce." This memorial was referred to 
 Lord Curzon, who refused to lay down any such 
 limit. No such limit exists, or ever did exist, as an 
 independent inquiry would immediately prove. In- 
 cluding the cesses and rates for roads, irrigation, 
 police, &c., I will undertake to establish that the 
 65 per cent, limit is often exceeded. 
 
 The defence of the Government of India, as put 
 forward by Lord Curzon in rejecting the above 
 
 III 
 
The Causes of 
 
 memorial, was a very simple one. He urged that,, 
 admitting that the land-tax did amount to between 
 50 and 65 per cent, of the net income of 
 * ^fenw!'*^ the farmer, it was also certain that the \ 
 
 tax really did not exceed 7 to 10 per \ 
 cent, of his gross profit, that is, of the price realised ' 
 by the sale of his crops. Since civilised government 
 began was there ever such an absolutely ridiculous 
 attempt at justification ? Yet I have heard it used 
 in the House of Commons by Sir Henry Fowler, who 
 is supposed to be a business man. Can it be a 
 sincerely honest defence of the land-tax in India? 
 What would the owners of a coal-mine say to the 
 Income Tax Assessor who based his assessment on the 
 total gross receipts at the pit's mouth, without taking 
 into account the cost of labour, machinery, manage- 
 ment, and general upkeep.'' Even a 5 per cent, 
 income-tax on gross receipts would break nine out 
 of ten of the industrial undertakings of England. And 
 it is this kind of political economy that is employed 
 to justify the taxation of the Indian peasantry, whose 
 total annual income was estimated by Lord Curzon 
 himself at ;^i is. 5d. per head of the population. 
 
 In conclusion, I beg to draw attention to one of 
 the flagrantly inaccurate statements that the India 
 
 Office puts in the mouths of its temporary 
 Office FaMe. chiefs in Parliament. Mr. Hobhouse, the 
 
 Under Secretary, in replying to a question 
 of mine on May 16, 1907, stated that "It is also 
 unquestionably a fact that our assessment for land 
 revenue is anything from 15 to 30 per cent, lower 
 than that of the native rulers who were there before 
 
 112 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 our time." I will take the single example of Bombay, 
 which province was conquered in 1817. Its land 
 revenue under its last native rulers was 8,000,000 of 
 rupees, as estimated by its first British collectors. 
 The second year of our government saw it increased 
 to 11,500,000, and in 1823 to 15,000,000. It reached 
 28,000,000 in 1855 '■ 37,000,000 in 1875, and soared 
 to 48,500,000 of rupees in 1895. It is, however, 
 really impossible to make any effective comparison, 
 as we have no information of the area under culti- 
 vation in the days of native rule or of the then popu- 
 lation. But this we do know, that the native system 
 of assessment was the justest ever applied. It was 
 of Musalman origin and founded on the Koran. 
 There is little of the teaching of the Bible in our 
 treatment of the poorest peasantry under our do- 
 minion. Our assessment is made once for twenty or 
 thirty years, which may be a period of luxuriant crops 
 or of drought. The God-fearing Musalman assessed 
 j the Government share annually at harvest time, and 
 took each year the value of one-fourth part of the 
 standing crop, whether good Or bad. The revenue 
 was thus small in years of scarcity, whilst the State 
 properly enjoyed its share of the wealth of a prosper- 
 ous season. The Indian peoples would go mad with 
 joy if they saw any hope of the British Government 
 reviving this admirable " native " procedure. They 
 have petitioned for it, but the Statistical Department 
 reported that its acceptance would involve a great 
 reduction of rent and revenue. I am quite aware 
 that it is impossible to adopt it now, but that does 
 not justify the misrepresentation of " native rulers." 
 
 113 H 
 
The Causes of 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE DECADENCE OF THE INDIAN 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 I HAVE already quoted in the Preface a passage 
 from the great Conservative journal of India, the 
 
 "A Doc- Pioneer, describing the present Govern- 
 hT*"^" *"^"' °^ India as "a top-heavy, bureau- 
 cratic hierarchy, mechanical and doctrinaire." 
 It was not always so ; and no progress will be made 
 in Indian administration till the causes of its stag- 
 nation and decadence have been examined and 
 removed. 
 
 The Indian Civil Service continues to-day, as 
 
 it has been for a century, composed of as able and 
 
 high-minded a body of public servants as 
 The Old ° . , 11, , 
 
 Haueybniy exists in the world, but a great change 
 
 '^' has passed over its spirit and its personnel. 
 
 Down to the time of the Mutiny it was a close 
 
 jjreserve for the relatives and friends of the Directors 
 
 of the East India Company, and in some degree 
 
 suffered from the narrowness of the field from which 
 
 it was recruited. The old Haileybury Service, the 
 
 name by which it was called from the College at 
 
 which its cadets were educated, had, however, the 
 
 enormous advantage of an intimate acquaintance with 
 
 the people of India. A large number of its members 
 
 114 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 had been born in India, and the associations of 
 childhood tended to a very great kindliness towards 
 Indians. When I went to India first I was much 
 struck by the sincere friendliness that existed between 
 Indian gentlemen of position and the European 
 servants of the Crown. They often went out 
 shooting together, and the magistrate and the judge 
 were frequent visitors at the houses of the gentry 
 during native social and religious festivals. The 
 word " Babu," which means father, was still a term 
 of courtesy, used much as the prefix pere is employed 
 in a French village. Intercourse was, in fact, as 
 intimate as widely differing domestic customs would 
 allow. 
 
 The first change came with the advent of the 
 competition-wallah, who was recruited from an area 
 as wide as that of his predecessor was 
 narrow. The successful competitors came petmon- 
 from the outlying colleges of the United 
 Kingdom, from the Marischal College, Aberdeen, 
 and from Queen's College, Cork, from Owens College, 
 Manchester, and Aberystwyth. Indeed, the Celtic 
 fringe contributed a very large number of the first 
 competition civilians, and they brought to their duties 
 a cheerful sympathy with the people of India. Their 
 English brethren were also kindly, broad-minded 
 officials, and much good-will existed between them 
 and the people. Their two years' probationary 
 training was spent mostly in London, where they 
 acquired some of the mental humility of men of the 
 world. 
 
 The real change occurred about a quarter of a 
 
 "5 
 
The Causes of 
 
 century later when Lord Salisbury made Oxford the 
 training centre of the young men who were to 
 
 become the administrators of India, 
 of jowett. That they should be educated at the great 
 
 English University seemed at first sight 
 an excellent idea, but it had great disadvantages. 
 The majority of the men so trained, though cultured 
 and every way admirable in European society, 
 unfortunately had acquired that distant, superior, 
 half-supercilious manner which renders so many 
 Englishmen difficult in their dealings with other 
 races. The spirit of Oxford University at that 
 time was that of Professor Jowett, Master of Balliol 
 — the spirit of the Jingoism that in after years was 
 to involve England in serious trouble. Professor 
 Jnwett's letters to Lord Lansdowne during his vice- 
 royalty, published in 1899, show what the ideals 
 of Oxford were. He warned his ex-pupil that 
 "whenever we admit the masses of India to repre- 
 sentation, they will flood and drown us." " Educated 
 Indians should be treated with the greatest courtesy 
 and even compliment, but of course if they go beyond 
 their tether they have to be stopped " ; adding "that 
 the first duty of the English rulers of India is to 
 maintain themselves." The Master of Balliol seems, 
 however, to have recognised the kind of administrator 
 this idea of duty was likely to produce. 
 
 " The English and Indian tempers," he wrote, " can never 
 harmonise. The Englishman has no sympathy with other 
 nations. He cannot govern without asserting his superiority. 
 He has always a latent consciousness of the difference of colour. 
 And hence a native would rather be under the capricious sway 
 
 n6 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 of one of the native princes, than under the equitable adminis- 
 tration of a Civil Servant." 
 
 This uncomplimentary appreciation of his fellow- 
 countrymen was true only of the Englishmen he 
 came in contact with at Oxford. The non-University 
 Englishmen — the merchant or the engine-driver — 
 gets on very well with Indians. My experience also 
 is that the natives of India prefer a British official 
 of the right sort, from whom they expect and generally 
 get justice in our general administration and in our 
 courts of law. 
 
 For the last twenty-five years the Civil Service 
 and the people of India have become more and more 
 estranged, and the cause is largely Oxford, 
 
 ,.,*.,„. , 5 1- BaUlol Ideals. 
 
 which, with all its culture and manliness, 
 is hopelessly uncongenial. The examinations for 
 the Civil Service just suit the education given there, 
 and alumni of the Scotch, Irish, and Welsh colleges, 
 who now pass out, are few and far between. The 
 last list of successful candidates shows thirty-nine 
 out of eighty educated at Oxford. Twenty-six were 
 graduates of Cambridge ; but, of those who elect for 
 Indian employment, many prefer to reside at Oxford, 
 and Balliol ideals soon unfit them for ruling a 
 conquered people with sympathy or common sense. 
 The failure of the administration in recent years 
 is also largely connected with the gradual breaking 
 up of the governing service in both the 
 supreme and provincial governments into ta^tsystom. 
 two sections — the Secretariat and the 
 general body of district officers and judges. In the 
 old days a man became a secretary to Government 
 
 "7 
 
The Causes of 
 
 after a long period of training in district adminis- 
 tration, rarely less than twenty years. During the 
 past quarter of a century inner rings have grown up 
 which are recruited by young men of ambition and 
 ability, especially by those who wield a facile pen 
 and use it for the defence of the views of those to 
 whom they owe their immature promotion. A clever 
 young civilian, a few years after he reaches India, 
 before he has learnt even one of the languages of 
 the country or is in touch with the people, is often 
 nowadays appointed to be an assistant or under- 
 secretary, say, at Calcutta or Lahore. Without 
 ever returning to district work, he develops by years 
 of patient office work, aided perhaps by an influential 
 marriage, into a deputy secretary or a full secretary, 
 or an inspector-general, or arrives at some other high 
 office, even a lieutenant-governorship. By degrees, 
 in this manner, the Governments of India, local and 
 supreme, have passed into the hands of groups of 
 I clever doctrinaire Imperialists of the Curzon type, 
 i dogmatic and self-sufficient, who know little more 
 'about India than if they had spent their lives in the 
 India Office at London. A few of them sometimes 
 return to district work, and are generally failures 
 when they come to grips with actual administration. 
 They form the " Governments/' which so often 
 muddle things from sheer ignorance or from 
 ment™ ^ desire to push some ill-considered ad- 
 witnout ministrative fad. There is an old feud be- 
 tween the Secretariat and the experienced 
 district officers, who are constantly forced by their 
 discipline and loyalty to carry out measures they 
 
 ii8 
 
Present Discontents in India 
 
 condemn and know to be bad. The Secretariat 
 official always writes in the name of "His Excellency 
 the Viceroy " or " His Honour the Lieutenant- 
 Governor," and must be obeyed. Lord Curzon's 
 Partition of Bengal is a case in point. It was 
 generally — I might say, universally — condemned by 
 the older district officers, who, however, had to give 
 effect to, and fight for a measure they knew to 
 be radically unsound. 
 
 Another cause of ill-success in Indian government 
 is the fact that in every department an officer gains 
 the top of the tree when he is far advanced 
 in his service and is approaching com- HigS^Ms. 
 pulsory retirement under some limit-of-age 
 ordinance. This disadvantage is aggravated at times 
 by what is known as the five-years' rule, the period 
 during which some high authorities, from the Viceroy 
 downwards, hold office. It is not so much that the 
 frequent changes of personnel are in themselves 
 injurious, but these rules induce a spirit of hurry in 
 high places. When a man knows that he has got 
 only a limited time in which to carry through some 
 great measure, he is very liable to rush things and 
 to force to a conclusion matters which need a slower 
 development. Age limits in the Civil Services of 
 England have not these unsatisfactory results because 
 their members do not originate policies, but are 
 merely the agents of statesmen, who are not affected 
 by such regulations and who can consequently take 
 their own time. 
 
 Frequent furloughs and short leave to England 
 often disturb officials' minds. India is no longer the 
 
 119 
 
Causes of Present Discontents in India 
 
 life-home of the Civil servant. His wife also does 
 not settle down to Indian conditions as the English 
 
 lady of thirty years ago did. In a way 
 'ofMie.'' ^^^ present administrators of India have 
 
 no permanent stake in the country. The 
 dream of the modern civilian is not so much India 
 and its progress as the thrice happy day when he 
 can bid adieu to the East and return to an English 
 fireside. He is approximating more year by year 
 to the Frenchman, who hates his exile in Saigon or 
 Tonkin and longs for Paris and his beloved France. 
 The Frenchman has largely failed as a colonial 
 administrator for this very reason, and the same 
 fate is rapidly overtaking his English compeer. It 
 is a noticeable fact that at the Civil Service examina- 
 tions the successful candidates who top the list prefer 
 a clerk's stool at Somerset House or the Admiralty 
 to the chances of great distinction and exile in 
 India. India must perhaps look to her own sons — 
 European, Eurasian, and Indian — for administrators 
 devoted, under the supremacy of the British Crown, 
 to her and to her alone. The Indian Civil Service 
 has done some of the finest work men ever did in 
 the way of civilising administration, but it has passed 
 the meridian of its influence and must yield to some 
 more progressive and less centralised system of 
 government. 
 
 IStmat BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRBSHAM PRESS, WOKING AMD LOKDW.