INDIA 
 
 After the War—In India 
 
 After 
 The 
 | War 
 
 Series 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the 
 | Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
 
AFTER THE WAR —IN INDIA 
 
 India was singularly peaceful during the 
 whole period of the war. She joined heart- 
 ily with Great Britain in the common effort 
 against the enemy, sending forth from her 
 shores about one million men, and providing 
 a war loan of over $500,000,000. It is true, 
 
 revolutionary societies were still at work in 
 
 the dark, but the Criminal Investigation 
 Department of Government was alert. In 
 general a good spirit prevailed, which was 
 greatly increased by the _ parliamentary 
 proclamation of August 20, 1917, announcing 
 “responsible government,” that is, Home 
 Rule for India, as a goal to be gradually 
 realized. Soon the Montague-Chelmsford 
 scheme was published, which awakened 
 throughout the country a very warm debate. 
 The great body of Moderates appreciated 
 the scheme and proposed only amendments 
 here and there. The Extremists, however, 
 rejected the plan as utterly unsuitable, 
 claiming not only that India is already fit 
 for complete self-rule, but also that she 
 should herself frame the terms of her own 
 government. 
 
 In the meantime the Rowlatt Committee 
 had been appointed to make a thorough in- 
 vestigation of the revolutionary activities 
 during the last twenty-five years, and to 
 suggest suitable legislation to enable Gov- 
 ernment more adequately to cope with such 
 activities. On the basis of the Rowlatt 
 Committee’s report, an act entitled, “The 
 Anarchical and Revolutionary and Crimes 
 Act of 1919,” was passed. There was very 
 strong opposition to the Act on the part 
 of the Indian members of the Imperial 
 Legislative Council, whether Moderates or 
 Extremists. 
 
 The Act was passed, and then behold! 
 Mr. M. K. Gandhi, an Indian patriot of 
 high character, headed the opposition. 
 
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 4) 
 
There had been formed the Satyagraha 
 movement, a kind of Indian “Solemn League 
 and Covenant.” The covenanters took a 
 pledge of which the following is the gist: 
 “We solemnly affirm that in the event of 
 these Bills becoming law, and until they 
 are withdrawn, we will refuse civilly to 
 obey these laws; and we further affirm that 
 in this struggle we will faithfully follow 
 truth (hence the name Satyagraha—‘truth- 
 acceptance’) and refrain from violence to 
 life, person and property.” In an address 
 at Bombay on the 15th of March, Mr. Gand- 
 ‘hi said: “The pledge is no small thing. It 
 means a change of heart. It is an attempt 
 to introduce the religious spirit into poli- 
 tics. We must no longer believe in the 
 doctrine of tit for tat. We must not meet 
 hatred by hatred, violence by violence, evil 
 by evil, but we have to make a persistent 
 effort to return good for evil.” The irony 
 of the situation is that in following the 
 leadership of a man holding such senti- 
 ments, worse disturbances have taken place 
 in India than at any time since the Mutiny 
 of 1857. 
 
 April 6, 1919, was proclaimed a day of 
 “passive resistance,” to be spent in fasting, 
 processions and prayer. In most places 
 throughout India Mr. Gandhi’s program was 
 peacefully carried out. Had the Indian 
 people all been of the type and character 
 of Mr. Gandhi, there would have been no 
 disturbance, but only a protest against the 
 Bill, of the nature partly of a “strike” and 
 partly of a religious ceremonial. Mr. Gand- 
 hi had not sufficiently considered the ex- 
 istence of a baser element in the population 
 and the general illiteracy and religious in- 
 flammability of the people. 
 
 It was in the Punjab, the land of fighters, 
 that the worst outbreaks took place—at 
 Delhi, Amritsar, Kasur, Gujranwala, Lahore. 
 
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At Delhi the clash came almost by acci- 
 dent. A Hindu at the railway station was 
 not fasting the 3lst of March (Satyagraha 
 Day), but was selling sweetmeats. So, 
 quite after the style of strikers, a band went 
 to dissuade him from work, peaceably if 
 possible, but at any rate to dissuade him. 
 He refused, and the station staff supported 
 him. There was a clash between the mob 
 and the police, which developed into a dan- 
 gerous riot. Similar disturbances occurred 
 in many other places. 
 
 From a letter dated Lahore, April 25th, 
 recently received from Dr. J. C. R. Ewing, 
 C.LE., Secretary of the Council of the 
 American Presbyterian Missions in India, 
 the following very graphic statement is 
 quoted: 
 
 “In Lahore things passed off with a fair 
 degree of quietness, but the crowd was 
 refused permission to march through the 
 Civil Station beyond the Commercial 
 Buildings. Following this, Mr. Gandhi 
 was stopped in his progress toward Del- 
 hi and sent back to Bombay, and the 
 news of his arrest created great excite- 
 ment. On that day a terrible outbreak 
 took place in Amritsar, where four Eu- 
 ropeans were killed and a number of 
 persons very roughly used, including a 
 missionary lady of the C. M. S. Before 
 order could be restored there, very severe 
 action was taken by the military. 
 
 “On the 10th of April a huge proces- 
 sion was formed and came out from La- 
 hore City, made up of two classes of 
 people: first, those who were largely 
 bent still upon passive resistance; and, 
 second, by a great mass who had un- 
 questionably allied themselves to the 
 crowd for sinister purposes. This mob 
 was stopped between the Forman Col- 
 lege and the Chief Court, and a number 
 
 4 
 
of persons were shot. Almost simultan- 
 eously with this, there was a serious 
 outbreak at Kasur, where two soldiers 
 were pulled from a train, one of whom 
 was killed and the other so seriously in- 
 jured that he died. An Englishman and 
 his wife were saved only by special 
 heroism on the part of an old student 
 of Forman College. 
 
 On May 22nd Dr. Ewing writes again: 
 
 “Had anyone told me two months ago 
 that conditions, such as existed in the 
 Punjab from April 6th to April 20th, 
 could possibly ever be found in that 
 Province, I would have ridiculed the 
 idea. In fact, I believe that the great 
 majority of Indian people were just as 
 much surprised as were Europeans and 
 Americans. A fine old Sikh officer put 
 the matter to me in this way as I traveled 
 with him on the train: ‘We in the Pun- 
 jab did great things in the war and ex- 
 pected something tangible in the way of 
 reward for patriotism. Instead of that 
 we were told that Government had en- 
 acted a Bill according to which (1) no 
 company of more than four in number 
 could ever assemble, or if so, the Police 
 would have full authority to shoot them 
 down; (2) no wedding or funeral could 
 take place without an initial payment of 
 Rs. 5 tax to Government, and then in the 
 presence of not more than 4 people; (3) 
 the farmer would not dare to harvest 
 his wheat until a Government representa- 
 tive had come and taken away the one- 
 half.” The masses of the people hear- 
 ing all these things accepted them at the 
 mouth of their leaders, and said, not un- 
 naturally: ‘It is better to die than to 
 live in such conditions.’ ” 
 
 How shall we account for these disturb- 
 
 — 
 
 oO 
 
ances in the Punjab? While the exciting 
 cause was doubtless antagonism to the 
 Rowlatt legislation, there were numerous 
 predisposing causes which must be taken 
 into account in any just view. The Punjab 
 furnished during the war about 350,000 
 fighting men. Many of these were killed in 
 the war or came home wounded. Thus the 
 strain of war was felt throughout the whole 
 Province. Then there was the economic 
 difficulty—most serious of all—famine 
 prices everywhere, due generally to the war 
 and especially to the failure of the rains in 
 1918. Pestilence in the form of influenza 
 struck India with frightful force, and ac- 
 counted for about 6,000,000 deaths in the 
 whole of India. Thus war, famine and pes- 
 tilence all combined to work havoc, and the 
 natural result of the suffering and priva- 
 tions involved was a somewhat nervous and 
 suspicious temper. It is easy to be “agin 
 the Government” when things are not going 
 well. Then is when the agitator has his 
 chance. When the situation was already 
 somewhat abnormal, the agitation over the 
 Rowlatt Bill began. It was the Rowlatt 
 Bill, not in isolation, but set in a context 
 of attending circumstances, which may be 
 fairly regarded as the cause of the out- 
 break. 
 
 We must remember, too, that the last 
 few months after the close of the war have 
 witnessed unrest and disturbances in many 
 parts of the world—bomb-throwing here in 
 America on the part of the “Reds,” riots in 
 Egypt, unrest in Chosen, the Sinn Feiner 
 agitation in Ireland, and the Bolsheviki ac- 
 tivities in Russia. The Peace Conference 
 has suggested from time to time pregnant 
 thoughts, such as “the rights of subject 
 peoples,” “the rights of small nations,” “the 
 principle of self-determination,” etc. In 
 such a world atmosphere as this, it would 
 
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have been altogether strange if India had 
 not been affected. The days are past when 
 in Kipling’s phrase India “heard the legions 
 thundering by, and then plunged to sleep 
 again.” She is now sensitive to all the cur- 
 rents of the world’s activities and the 
 world’s thought. 
 
 Quite likely the outburst in the Punjab 
 will clear the air and prepare the way for 
 a steady constitutional growth in the di- 
 rection of “responsible government.” It 
 may be that the very announcement of the 
 20th of August, 1917, in which the policy 
 of Parliament was declared to be the grad- 
 ual realization of responsible government 
 for India, was interpreted by many Indians 
 as a sign of weakness. Government has 
 corrected any such wrong impression by 
 her stern treatment of the recent rioters. 
 
 A significant change of allegiance may be 
 mentioned as prophetic, possibly, of a new 
 attitude toward the British Empire. For 
 the last ten years or more Har Dayal, M.A., 
 has been practically the head of the revo- 
 lutionary movement against British rule in 
 India. In letters written recently to “India” 
 and the “New Statesman” (Pioneer, April 
 27th and 30th), he announces his change of 
 attitude. He writes: “I have now formally 
 severed my connection with the Indian 
 revolutionists on the Continent. I am happy 
 to be in a position to work as a free, honest 
 man and a loyal British subject again” 
 (January 31, 1919). The reasons for this 
 change are given as follows: “I now be- 
 lieve that the consolidation of the British 
 Empire in the East is necessary to the best 
 interests of the people of India, Burma, 
 Egypt and Mesopotamia. The break up of 
 | the British Empire in Asia would lead only 
 to a change of masters of the people of 
 | India and Egypt. British and French im- 
 perialism in its worst form is a thousand 
 
 we 
 
 ( 
 
times preferable to German or Japanese im- 
 perialism.” Har Dayal spent two years 
 (1915-1916) in Berlin. Doubtless during this 
 time he was compelled to picture India un- 
 der Prussian rule asa grim possibility. So 
 he closes one of the articles with the words: 
 “Let us not jump out of the frying pan of 
 British imperialism into the fire of—who 
 knows what.” 
 
 The recent riots’in India have undoubt- 
 edly been more serious than any occurrences 
 since the Mutiny of 1857. The air, we may 
 hope, has been cleared by the explosion. 
 We may count with some confidence on a 
 steady constitutional progress toward the 
 goal of “responsible government,” steady 
 progress in industrial development (so 
 sorely needed), and rapid progress in the 
 Christianization of India. India is now, as 
 perhaps never before, in the melting pot. 
 She needs sympathy, comradeship, and sac- 
 rificial service. Probably there will be a 
 new era of Christian progress in India, very 
 much as there was in China after the Boxer 
 movement. At such a time as this the 
 Christian college is invaluable as a means 
 of preparing a wise and sane leadership for 
 India. Says Rev. E. D. Lucas, M.A., Prin- 
 cipal of the Forman Christian College, La- 
 hore: “The need for strong missionary col- 
 leges to influence and guide these impres- 
 sionable students was never greater than 
 to-day.” It is a time then to devise large 
 things. The Christian Church in India and 
 Christian missions from abroad have a stu- 
 pendous work to do in helping morally and 
 spiritually to prepare the Indian people for 
 the task of self-government within the 
 British Empire, which work can be fully 
 accomplished only as they are prepared for 
 citizenship within the Kingdom of God. 
 
 H. D. GRISWOLD, 
 
 Lahore. 
 Sept., 1919 Form 2674 |