'^ f^^y^'^"^

ia,»om;?0-"-'"'*ty«"-;'

1 1 T 1 H	r^^f	gfe	L
E		j]	B
A	j	ii	R
s		ff
1	(^	A
A		R
N		Y
THE FUTURE	OF
1 1 INDIAN POLITICS 1
1 ANNIE BESANT

THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN

2097 ALLSTON WAY

BERKELEY. CAL.

GIFT OF Theosophical Book Cone

ei n

THE

Future of Indian Politics

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING

OF Present-Day Problems

BY

ANNIE BESANT, D. L.

Fellow of Benares University

AND Life-Member of the University Court

Fellow of the National University

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING	HOUSE
9 S. Martin's St.	INDIA Ind	ian Book Shop
London	Adyar	Medow Street
W.C. 2	and Benares 1922	Bombay

T3 35

COPYRIGHT

In England, India end United States, America

To THE Aryan Motherland

AND To THE COMING WORLD-COMMONWEALTH,

To ALL Her Children,

WHITE AND COLOURED,

WHO HAVE WORKED, SUFFERED AND DIED,

AND — HARDEST OF ALL — LIVED

FOR Her —

in love and loyalty,

in faith in her future,

Her Servant

LAYS AT Her Feet this little book

6796S4

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2007 witii funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

littp://www.arcliive.org/details/futureofindianpoOObesaricli

FOREWORD

This booklet is intended to offer to those interested in the fate of India and Great Britain, a picture showing the problems that India has to solve in the near future in connec- tion with Self-Determination and Self-Govern- ment, and in her decision between solitary Independence and Partnership in a Common- wealth of Free Nations, under the British Crown. The two last chapters deal with these; the background, necessary for the understanding and the decision of these two supreme questions, determining the future of both Nations, is painted in with care, so as to contain the vital facts, and those only, which have led to the parting of the ways, indicated in the problems. An Introduction gives " A Bird's-Eye View" of the relations between India and Britain, from their first important

VI

contact to the end of the East India Company Rule. " Step by Step " takes us from the first National Congress to the outbreak of the War. " A New Departure " tells of the Congress of 1914, Indians in the War, and the demand for the recognition of India as a component part of the Empire. " The Great Agitation " takes up the next two chapters, and carries us to the coming to India of the Secretary of State. " The New Spirit in India " marks the causes of her changed attitude. "The Struggle over the Reforms" tells of the Death of the Old Congress and the Reformed Legislatures. " The Revolutionary Movements " their causes and workings take us up to and through the Non-Co-Operation activity. Then follow the two last chapters.

I hope that the booklet may be useful in helping the understanding of the questions involved.

Annie Besant

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction : A Bird's-Eye View . . 1

I. Step by Step 25

II. A New Departure 67

III. The Great Agitation .... 85

IV. The Great Agitation (Continued) . . 98 V. The New Spirit in India. . . .130

VI. The Struggle Over the Reforms . . 196

VII. The Revolutionary Movements . . 223 VIII. Self-Determination and Self-

Government 260

IX. In a World-Commonwealth or Alone? . 294

Appendices : 317

I 319

II 324

Index . . . . . . .335

INTRODUCTION^- ' : ' ' V': tV: :•, ? A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW

The lives of India and England became interwoven on December 31, A.D. 1600, when Elizabeth of England gave a charter to " The Governor and Company of Merchants of London, trading in the East Indies ". Then were linked together the destinies of the two Nations, though littla did they bethink them- selves of the wondrous tree that was to spring from that little seed.

The Portuguese were the first modern European Nation to come to India, for Vasco de Gama discovered the Cape Route, leaving Lisbon on July 8, 1497, reaching Calicut, on the West Coast, on May 20, 1498, and

2 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

arriving again in Lisbon in August or Septem- ber, 1499. Three years later, in 1502, he €3tablished the first European settlement in Cochin-; ;Go^ ."i^as.- taken in 1510, and became the capital of Portuguese India, and still remains under that rule. The French were next in the field, sending over men to report on trading opportunities as early as 1537, but she did not found any factories until 1668, when some traders settled down in Surat on the West Coast, and Golconda. The reports to the French Government of Bernier and Tavernier during the reign of Aurungzeb (1658—1707) are classical. The French " East India Company" was formed in 1664, but Aurungzeb deprived it of Golconda in 1687. The Dutch arrived in 1601, and established a " United East India Company " of their own in the following year ; they built some factories on the East Coast, but finally devoted them- selves to the conquest of Java and Sumatra,

A bird's-eye view 3

from 1649 onwards. Denmark followed next, and made a start with an " East India Com- pany" in 1612, but her little earthen pot had no chance among the iron ones hurtling against each other, and she faded quickly away, leaving only some Protestant missionary centres in Southern India, and some traces also in Bengal. Ten years later, in 1622, the German Empire, then Austrian, started an " Ostend Company," and in 1644 Prussia made an experiment with her " Emden Company ". But all these disappeared except the Portu- guese, leaving France and England to battle, nominally for the trade with India, really for the mighty Empire, then but an embryo in the womb of the future. For the first English ships under the Elizabethan Charter had soon followed its granting, and in 1606 one reached Surat, and the traders began to look round. Meanwhile, a Captain Hippon started two trading establishments on the East

4 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Coast, one at Pettapoli, and the other at Masulipatam. In 1612 — or 1613, both dates are given — the East India Company made a serious beginning, for the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, son of Akbar, gave them a written document, permitting them to establish factories in Surat, Cambay, Gogo and Ahmedabad, and in 1616, the Zamorin of Malabar allowed them to set up a factory in Calicut, his capital city.

A glance at the conditions existing in India, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, will show us how the stage was arranged by the Great Dramatist for the struggle of the French and English for the European control of India, the victory of Great Britain, for the swift and, down here, un- planned rise of Britain as the Head of an Indian Empire, the acceptance of its rule by two-thirds of the country as an immediate British Raj (Kingdom], and the recogni- tion of the British Sovereigns by the Indian

A bird's-eye view 5

Monarchs, as Lords Paramount of India — in the traditional word, as Chakravartis.

This Overlordship was familiar as an inci- dent in Indian history. When the Monarch of a State felt himself strong enough to claim suzerainty over his brother Monarchs, ruling the many Kingdoms into which the vast peninsula of India was divided, he sent out a White Horse to travel through the kingdoms during one year, and the guardians of the Horse demanded acknowledgment of their King as Lord Paramount of the whole of India, and tribute as a sign of that acknowledgment ; if they met with refusal and the Horse was taken from them by a recalcitrant Monarch, they threw down the gage of battle, and war was declared. If the Horse was everywhere received with welcome, then he was brought back to his owner, the challenging Monarch, he was sacrificed with great pomp, and his Monarch was recognised as the Chakravarti,

6 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the Lord Paramount of India. The last Horse Sacrifice was performed by the Emperor Adityasena of the Gupta dynasty in the seventh century A.D. It was performed by Pushya- mitra, the founder of the Sufiga Dynasty, in 148 B.C. Yudhishthira performed it after the Great War, 3000 B.C. Before that, it goes back for uncounted years to Sagara, presumably accounted mythical by the short-sighted chroniclers of the West. It must be remem- bered that the Unity of India the "fundamental Unity," as Professor Radhakumud Mukerji calls it, has always been religious and cultural, and not political. This was untouched from the time of the successive Aryan waves of conquest, beginning about 18,000 B. C. and practically concluded by about 9000 B. C. — dates I give not from western "historical" documents but from the Occult Records, the " memory of Nature ". (Hindu records place it much earlier, probably because they do not

A bird's-eye view

lay stress on the Indian and the pre-Indian Aryan Empires in Central Asia, Mesopotamia, and on the great Lemurian Continent. But this by the way. It is " another story ".) This Unity was Aryan, and has a literature admit- tedly at least 7,000 years old. In this she is not known as " India," but as Bharatavarsha, Aryavarta, Jambudvlpa; the great Emperor Ashoka, for instance, is called the King of Jambudvipa. The prayers and hymns of Hindu rituals name her sacred rivers, her sacred cities, from Hardvara and Badarikedar- nath in the North to Kanchi and Rameshvaram in the South, from Dvaraka in the West to Jagannath in the East. This religious and cultural Unity, after existing for over sixteen hundred centuries, was broken, though but slightly, in the eighth century A. D. by the incursion into Sindh of Arabs from Bassorah, who had conquered Baluchistan, crossed the Indus and had settled down in Sindh, thereafter

8 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

held by Musalmans. A serious blow was struck at it by the Afghans under the Sultan of Ghazni, in A. D. 986, and five centuries of struggle followed; in A. D. 1162, the Pathans established themselves on the throne of Prithviraj, the last reigning descendant at Delhi of Yudhishthira, and Babar, the Mughal, defeated the Pathan Sultan in A. D. 1526, and was proclaimed Emperor of India at Delhi, the founder of the mighty Mughal Empire, which also perished at Delhi in September, 1857, when the city was taken by the British under General Nicholson, who was killed in the final assault. The Theocracy of the Musalmans caused a rift in the religious and cultural Unity of India, but Islam has added much to her Art and Science, and we will hope for a future synthesis of hitherto seemingly incompatible elements.

The immediate cause for the comparative ease of the British triumph lay in the rise of

A bird's-eye view 9

the great Maratha Power, preceded by a Hindu revival, and founded by the genius of Shivaji. He was crowned at Raipur in 1674 and died in 1680, but he had organised an Empire from Surat in the North to Hubli in the South, from the Indian Ocean in the West to Berar, Golconda and Bijapur in the East. He had done more ; he had " created a Nation ". His younger son Rajaram, began the great twenty years' War of Independence, faced the Mughal army under Aurungzeb, left his nephew Shahu to carry it on after his death, and Shahu regained his grandfather's Empire. The " Maratha Con- federacy broke the Musalman power, establish- ed its five branches at Poena, Nagpur, Indore, Gwalior and Baroda, and made the Great Mughal himself their puppet by 1803. They practically ruled India, but the struggles of Mughals and Marathas had weakened their common Motherland, and into this welter came Britain and France,

10 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

and played against each other for the great prize.

The two countries had increased in power during the rise of the Marathas, without draw- ing much attention to their advances. England had founded Madras in 1640, obtained Bombay in 1662 as the bridal dowry of Catherine of Braganza, Queen of Charles II, and acquired Calcutta in 1698. France settled in Pondicherry in 1674, and established its government there. During this period, the great rivals intrigued against each other, playing for trade advan- tages with rival Princes, and helping one Prince or another with a view less of aiding the Prince than of weakening his antagonist, supported by the rival European Company. It was an underground war of rival traders. We need not delay on it, nor on the armed conflict which succeeded it. In the result, the English won, and looking below the surface, for those who believe in an Inner Government

A bird's-eye view 11

of the World, the reason was plain. I gave it in 1915 :

Britain succeeded, because she was the Power that held in her the most fertile seed of free institutions, because she was on the eve of estab- lishing democratic government on her own soil on the surest basis, so that while she might enthrall for a time, ultimate freedom under her rule was inevitable. France had behind her then only the traditions of tyranny ; the Bourbons ruled and rioted. India needed for her future a steady pressure, that would weld her into one Nation on a modern basis, that she might become a Free Nation among the Free. The Hi^h Powers that guide the destinies of Nations saw Britain as fittest for this intermediate and disciplinary stage. [How India Wrought for Freedom, Introduction, p. xxxvi.)

Let us remember these words, that " ulti- mate freedom under her rule was inevitable"; later, we shall see them proved.

I conclude this " Bird's-Eye View " by summing up the two main results one evil, one good, of Britain's rule in this country ; the rule is divisible into two periods ; the Govern- ment by the East India Company from the battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757, to the

12 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, and the Government by the Crown from November, 1858, to the passing of the Reform Act in 1919. The first was wholly autocratic. The second slowly introduced elements of liberty, and in 1919 laid the foundations of Responsible Government.

The results of the first period were tragic beyond words. The Company had as its one object successful trade, the accumulation of wealth ; there were several rival Companies competing for trade, but they were consoli- dated in 1702.

Here was a Company, to all intents and purposes independent ; it was ruled by a Board of Directors in London ; it chose its own agents, it made its own armies ; after a time it appointed a Governor, then a Governor-General ; it applied for Charters, for Courts of Justice, and got them — with subsequent horrors related by Macaulay. There was no effective control over its proceedings, although Parliament interfered for the first time in 1773, and a Board of Control was established in 1784, and the Court of Directors placed under it — a clumsy dual arrangement, making no real difference. The one useful thing was the renewal of the Charter,

A bird's-eye view 13

preceded by an enquiry, which at last revealed the state of things — and terrible are the records. When things became too outrageous, Parliament inter- fered, as in the impeachment of Warren Hastings ; but, for the most part, Britain was far too busy with her own troubles, her loss of her American Colonies, her Napoleonic Wars, the struggles of her rising Democracy, the miserable condition of her people, her Chartists, her agricultural riots, and the rest, to trouble much about what a trading Company was doing in far-away heathen India ; the Company made treaties and broke them, or forged them, if more convenient ; it cheated, robbed, murdered, oppressed, and — built an Empire in about a century. Clive was the first Governor under the East India Company in 1758; Earl Canning the last in 1856. The Company ended in the Sepoy War of 1857, and the Crown assumed the sovereignty in 1858. (How India Wrought for Freedom^ Introduction, pp. xxxix, xl.)

The results of the Company's rule during its first fifty years were summed up by Macaulay, who gives a terrible account of the oppres- sions of the Company at this time :

"Thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this . . . That Government, oppressive

14 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilisation." He quotes a Musalman historian, who praises the extra- ordinary courage and military skill of the English : ** But the people under their dominion groan every- where, and are reduced to poverty and distress. O God ! come to the assistance of thy afflicted servants, and deliver them from the oppressions which they suffer." In 1770 there was an awful famine ; " the Hooghly every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead." It was " officially reported to have swept away two-thirds of the inhabitants," {lmt)erial Gazetteer, ii, 480), or 10,000,000 persons. (Ibid., xliii, xliv.)

The tremendous stream of wealth that flowed to England during this time gave the impetus to English industrialism that turned her from a Protection into a Free Trade Country, and made her, for a time, the greatest manufacturing country in the world. The result on India was terrible poverty and recurring famines; the latter chiefly due to the ruin of her in- dustries and the consequent throwing of her

A bird's-eye view 15

population on the land ; a similar ruin in Ireland had a similar result in famine, but there half her people emigrated to America ; India had no such resource, so her people died where they were. Her poverty is still ghastly, as is shown by the average life of her popula- tion as given by Mr. Gokhale at 23*5 years ; the average age in New Zealand is 60 years. I have written so fully on this (see Introduction to How India Wrought for Freedom^ and many speeches in the body of the book ; or, India : — A Nation] that I will not repeat it here ; her present poverty is almost incredible, but stares us in the face by the slight hold the peasants have on life, as shown by the huge mortality from any epidemic, while her former wealth would be as incredible, were it not historically proved ; and there is the significant fact that the Nations of Europe fought for her trade and the right to plunder her. Also her education was destroyed, and from being perhaps the best

16 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

educated country in the world, with a "school in every village," she sank into an illiteracy greater than that of Russia. It is such facts, accumulated and circulated, which made our strength in the Home Rule movement, and won the Reform Act.

We submit from a review of this rough sketch : That India, despite foreign invasions and local disturbances, which all Nations have suffered in their time — what peace had England from the Conquest up to the final defeat of Charles Edward in 1745 ? — was a prosperous and wealthy Nation before the coming of the East India Company, and that her huge wealth, down to the end of the eighteenth century, is a proof of general industry and security and immense industrial output among the masses, while the wealth of the merchants, and of the banking and trading communities shows a settled condition, where credit was good ; that commercial integrity was so great that receipts and bonds were not demanded in financial transactions.

That the English connection, under the Com- pany, reduced India to poverty, and dislocated her industries, and that, under the Crown, the Govern- ment still hamper her industries, make a cruelly severe drain upon the country, and by their fiscal arrangements prevent the return of prosperity^ That between 1770 and 1900—130 years— there have

A bird's-eye view 17

been twenty-two famines, eighteen according to the Report of the Famine Commission of 1880 and four after 1880. In 1770, as we have seen, there was a famine in Bengal with 10,000,000 deaths ; in 1783 in Madras ; in 1784 in Upper India, which left Oudh in a pitiable condition; in 1792 in Bombay and Madras; in 1803 in Bombay; in 1804 in northern India ; in 1807 in Madras ; in 1813 in Bombay ; in 1823 in Madras ; in 1833 in Madras, where in one district, Guntur, 200,000 died out of 500,000 popula- tion, and the dead lay unburied about Madras, Masulipatam and Nellore ; in 1837 in north India, in which a calculation of 800,000 deaths is thought too low by the Famine Commission; in 1854 in Madras ; in 1860 in northern India, about 200,000 deaths ; in 1866 in Orissa and Madras, in Orissa a third of the people died, about 1,000,000, in Madras about 450,000 ; in 1869 in north India, about 1,200,000 deaths; in 1874 in Bengal, over 1,000,000 were relieved and life was saved ; in 1877 in Madras, 5,250,000 deaths ; in 1878 in north India, 1,250.000 deaths ; in 1889 in Madras and Orissa ; in 1892 in Madras, Bengal and Rajputana ; in 1896 — 7 in North India, Bengal, Madras and Bombay — the number of deaths is not given, but 4,000,000 persons received relief; and in 1899—0, in north India, Central Provinces and Bombay, 6,500,000 persons were in receipt of relief — the worst famine on record. In 1892 and 1897, Burma also suffered from famine. In 1896, bubonic plague broke in Bombay, and has slain its millions. (Ibid,, pp. lii— liv). 2

18 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

The annexations, conquests, plunderings, only finished up with the annexation of Oudh in 1856, this last being the real cause of the Sepoy Rebellion, the last straw that broke the camel's back.

It is felt in India that her own systenvof Village Councils, and the ascending grades of which I shall speak presently were more successful than the new system imposed upon her, which turned her village servants into village tyrants ; that her village industries and her many exquisite crafts have been well-nigh killed out by inferior cheap goods ; that her irrigation, so carefully provided by her own rulers, has been starved, and forestry till lately disregarded, causing barren wastes and lessen- ed rainfall ; that British rule is costly, and has been too ready to resort to coercion where remedy of grievances should have been sought. But with the Reform Act she sees the dawn- ing, and lifts up her head to greet the

A bird's-eye view 19

coming day. Let the dead past bury its dead.

What is the other side of the picture ?

India's civilisation was based on the family, and therefore on " Dharma," mutual obliga- tions. A man living in Society has duties to discharge, according to the faculties he brought with him into the world ; in a civilised land, a man is born into a network of obligations. This theory gave her a stable social order, and her marvellous material prosperity and wealth, despite many raids, invasions, and local conquests by less civilised Nations ; her vast area discounted the effect of these, and her agricultural and industrial wealth, her banks, her trade and commerce, remained with an unrivalled stability for at least 5,000 years, taking the date from ordinary western history. None the less, with the efflux of time, the sense of obligation, of submission to authority, grew disproportionately strong, and the earlier

20 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

sturdiness of their Aryan forefathers slowly decreased ; they became submissive to tyranny, and habituated to passive obedience. They looked on governing as the business of the governors, and if the governor governed tyrannically, it was for God, not for them, to remove him. Hence what might be called a political fatalism.

The English with their struggles for Free- dom, their doctrine of human Rights, their rebellious independence and restless energy, equipped with the resources of modern science, their making their country the refuge of all western rebels against tyranny, and with an arrogant sense of their own superiority, were exactly the corrective for the undue sub- missiveness, the political indifference and lack of public spirit reigning in India. They gave external order after 1858, and, since 1835, they had been spreading English education, thie beginning of which goes to the credit side

A bird's-eye view 21

of the Company, its only asset, except that they sent some first-rate men|to India during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and many of these inculcated English doctrines of Liberty. Macaulay in a famous passage, though in a tone of insufferable superiority, struck a fine note :

It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system ; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government ; that having become instructed in European know- ledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come, I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history. To have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes

22 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism ; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws. (India : a Nation^ p. 184.^

Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji said :

The introduction of English education, with its great, noble, elevating, and civilising literature and advanced science, will for ever remain a monument of good work done in India and a claim to gratitude upon the Indian people. This education has taught the highest political ideal of British citizenship and raised in the hearts of educated Indians the hope and aspiration to be able to raise their countrymen to the same ideal of citizenship. This hope and aspiration as their greatest good are at the bottom of all their present sincere and earnest loyalty, in spite of disappointmenjts, discouragements and despotism, of a century and a half. {Ibid., p. 64.)

He also pointed out that English Education was unifying India, and that political union was the first fruit of the awakening. Railways, posts and telegraphs made rapid intercom- munion possible, and brought educated people into a sympathetic unity of ideas, aspirations and hopes. The revival of India's own religi- ons, and researches into her long history

A bird's-eye view 23

aroused self-respect and gave birth to an in- tense pride in their Nationhood. The National Congress, largely inspired by Englishmen and by English ideas, focussed their aspirations and educated their hopes. Into such a Nation, thus prepared, swept the wave of a War based on Ideals of Liberty.

On all sides it is now admitted that the loyalty of the educated classes to the Crown and the Empire in this hour of sore trial has been perfect. How is it then that education has at once made them deeply resentful and yet loyal ? The answer is very simple. English education has made them see the glory of English liberty, and they are passionately desirous of sharing it. English education has made them realise that they are the intellectual equals of Englishmen, and that even if they were not, they have exactly the same right to govern their own country as the Englishmen have to govern theirs. Hence English education has made them profoundly discontented with the autocracy of the Secretary of State, administered here by a haughty bureaucracy, whereof Macaulay said in prophetic words : ** God forbid that we should inflict on her the curse of the new caste, that we should send her a new breed of Brahmins, authorised to treat all the native popula- tion as Pariahs." (St)eeches, p. 73.)

24 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

But English education has also made them loyal, because they believe that the best realisation of their aspirations is in becoming a Self- Governing unit in the Federal Empire of which Great Britain will be the centre, and because they thus desirej they are fighting for that Empire to-day. {Ibid., pp. 65, 66.)

Let us close on the note of the words that I said we should remember : " Ultimate freedom under her rule was inevitable."

CHAPTER I STEP BY STEP

We begin with the words with which we finished our " Bird's-Eye View " : " ultimate freedom under her rule was inevitable " ; and we must first note the great institution known as the Indian National Congress, which laid, well and truly, the foundations of Indian Free- dom from December, 1885, to August, 1918, both in Bombay.

Some English critics, in the early days of the War, angrily declared that India had taken advantage of the War to press a new claim for Dominion status. That was not so. The new departure in 1913 resembled in one marked way the new departure when the National

26 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Congress was planned in 1884. The seed of both was planted by the Theosophical Society. It was at the Theosophical Convention of that year that a small group of earnest Theo- sophists — deeply concerned for the political future of their country and aroused to a sense of her past powers and her then present impotence by the awakening crusades of H. P. Blavatsky and Henry Steele Olcott, stirring the educated to self-respect and res- pect for their Nation — meeting in Adyar, decided to make an effort for political redemption; feeble as they seemed, they felt strong in their belief that India's ancient Rshis still watched over Their ancient and ever well-loved land, and would aid their efforts to bring about her political resurrection ; so they gathered a small meeting in Madras — there were only seventeen of them — and it was there decided to begin " a National move- ment for the saving of the Motherland " {How

STEP BY STEP 27

India Wrought for Freedom^ p. 2). A list of the seventeen is there given, quoted from the Indian Mirror, and they were mostly delegates to the Theosophical Convention from Calcutta, Bombay, Poena, Benares, Allahabad, Bengal,^ Oudh and the Northwest Province (now the United Provinces), and Madras. One of them, Norendranath Sen, Editor of the (Calcutta) Indian Mirror, says of them in his paper : " The delegates who attended the [Theo- sophical] Convention were most of them men who, socially and intellectually, are the leaders of the Society in which they move in different parts of the country." They resolved that on their return home, each would form a Committee in his own town or Province, and consult how to make their dream a reality. " In March, 1885, it was decided to hold a meeting of representatives from all parts of India at the then coming Christmas " [^Proceedings of the First Indian National Congress^ They

28 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

estimated that seventy delegates would be pre- sent, and seventy-two attended, strengthened by thirty friends. From that first meeting in 1885 to that of Bombay in 1918 — with one break-down at Surat in 1907 — the Congress was truly National, and guided Indian Politics. During all these years the National Congress had awakened large numbers of the English- educated classes to political self-consciousness, and had trained them in political knowledge. English names, Hume, Wedderburn, Cotton, and others are found co-operating with the Indian patriots. It met yearly and demanded definite improvements in the system of Government, definite changes in legislation, definite reforms of abuses, definite limitations of autocracy and enlargements of liberty. In 1906, moved to anger by the Curzonian regime, Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, as President, went beyond partial reforms, and declared that Indians should control India, as Englishmen

STEP BY STEP 29

controlled England. This was "absolutely necessary" for the progress and welfare of the Indian people.

The whole matter can be comprised in one word, Self- Government, or Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies . . . Self-Govern- ment is the only and chief remedy. In Self- Government lie our hope, strength and greatness . . . Be united, persevere, so that the millions now perishing by poverty, famine and plague, and the scores of millions that are starving on scanty subsistence may be saved, and India may once more occupy her proud position of yore among the greatest and civilised Nations of the West.

This clear note was drowned in the flood of anger which broke through all barriers at the succeeding Congress at Surat, and brought about the catastrophe of its breaking up, and a consequent tearing apart of the Congress party. The Congress thereafter resumed its method of pressing reforms piecemeal, until a new departure, linking itself to the declara- tion of 1906, was made in the Madras Congress of 1914.

30 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Once more this was prepared for quietly, in a little meeting of Theosophists held in September, 1913, at Adyar, in which I told them of the need of a new move forwards for the fourfold regeneration of India, and asked their help. It was a "Conference of Theo- sophical Workers," called by me to organise more fully than previously the four lines along which National Regeneration must be worked for, if India is to take her rightful place as the spiritual teacher of mankind. Twenty years of Indian experience were behind me, and now the fourfold activity was to be consciously welded into one, and I called on the workers who had been pursuing with me one or other of these lines. They were reforms in (1) Religion; (2) Education; (3) Social Customs ; (4) Politics ; corresponding to man's fourfold constitution: (1) Spirit; (2) Mind; (3) Emotions; (4) Physical Body. In 1893, I had begun the work for (1) Religion

STEP BY STEP 31

against Materialism, continued ever since, so splendidly commenced and carried on by Colonel H. S. Olcott, taught and inspired by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ; he had worked most for Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, both more congenial to him than Hinduism, though he served both it and Islam to a more limited extent ; great was his rejoicing when he found that I was intellectually and instinctively Hindu, "to do for Hinduism," he said, "what I have done for Buddhism ". This inner leaning to one religion rather than another is, of course, the result of previous lives. In (2) Education, Colonel Olcott had chief- ly confined himself to founding Buddhist schools in Ceylon, and five Panchama (out- caste) Free Schools in Madras, though he had also started many Bala Samajas — Boys' Societies — for religious instruction. Govern- ment Schools in this country excluding religion from their curriculum, the only alternative

32 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

being the Christian Missionary Schools, in which a faith hostile to the religions of the country is taught. In the education given by Theosophists, every student is taught his or her own religion — wherever possible, by a teacher belonging to it — and a common religi- ous service opens each day in school. The restoration of Religion to its rightful place in Education has been a characteristic of all our educational work. After some years of lectur- ing on " National Education," I took part with other enthusiasts in founding, in 1898, the Central Hindu College and School in Benares^ and we carried it on — giving an Education religious, intellectual, moral and physical (fourfold, as stated above), teaching loyalty to the Sovereign hand in hand with service to the country— until 1914 ; during these sixteen years, I was President of the Board of Trustees and Chairman of the Manag- ing Committee. In 1914, we determined ta

STEP BY STEP 33

give over our College and School, with its lands, buildings and funds to the Hindu Uni- versity Society, of which we had become members, that it might be the nucleus of a larger work, and we elected from our Board its President and ten Trustees to be life- members of the Court, the University equival- ent of our Board. Since then, we have served in the Court and Council, some of us in the Senate and Syndicate also, of the Hindu University. After I became President of the Theosophical Society, on the passing away of its President-Founder, Colonel H. S. Olcott, my place of residence became Adyar in the South, instead of Benares in the North, and in 1913 a Theosophical Educational Trust was formed there, which accepted students of all faiths in its schools ; in 1917, came a Society for the Promotion of National Education, with Sir Rash Bihari Ghosh as President, with which the Theosophical Trust affiliated itself, and this.

34 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

with its University, of which Sir Rabindranath Tagore became Chancellor and Sir Subramania Aiyer Pro-Chancellor, flourished exceedingly with, in 1918, six Colleges and many Schools, until Mr. Gandhi's movement spread hatred of all who did not accept his leadership, and lessened public contributions, forcing us to contract our work. In [3) Social Reform, the work for changing bad social customs went slowly in comparison with the pre- ceding two, but within the Theosophical Society, we organised a band of Social Re- formers, working especially against child- marriage — in the Hindu Collegiate School we gradually refused all married boys, taking a promise from the parents not to marry them while in the School — for the uplift of the sub- merged classes, for foreign travel and the extinction of outcasting as a penalty therefor. We also worked hard for Svadeshi — the use of Indian-made articles in preference to

STEP BY STEP 35

foreign-made — for Temperance, for the removal of caste distinctions in society by interdining and social intercourse, with intermarriage between subdivisions of the same caste, and for the re- moval of the colour bar between the white and coloured races in India and in all parts of the British Empire. For these things we formed a band of workers, united by a promise of practical work. In (4) Politics I worked more in England for the recognition of the Rights of India than directly in India itself, well knowing that until pride in India was aroused, pride in her past and hope for her future, until social self-respect and independence were awakened, no strong bases existed for true political liberty. Our Central Hindu College, at its out- set, was branded as " seditious " by the Lieut. Governor, Sir Antony Macdonnell — now Lord Macdonnell, and still an enemy of Indian Liberty — and I was only saved from prosecu- tion in 1910, by the strong intervention of

3iB THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Mr. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, for an Appeal to Englishmen not to awaken hatred to their race by insulting treatment of Indians in railroads, restaurants, and other public places. The Anglo-Indian newspapers were furious, for I was very unpopular with the British in India, partly because I loved Hinduism and fought against missionary efforts to pervert Hindus, especially schoolboys, and partly because I lived among Hindus as one of them- selves, sharing in their family life and observ- ing their customs. For a white woman thus " to degrade herself," to be seen walking and driving with Hindus, was anathema.

At the Conference of Theosophical Workers, these four lines of work were systematised in a small band, named " The Brothers of Service," and the following statement was drawn up, and circulated as a leaflet :

** Theosophy must be made practical " was a sentence written and published long ago by one of Those whom Theosophists regard as Masters.

STEP BY STEP 37

Since Mrs. Annie Besant came to India in 1893, she has been seeking for ways of service to India, so that the country of her adoption might rise in the scale of Nations, and take the world-position to which her past entitles her and which her future will justify. Rightly or wrongly, she judged that the great Forward Movement must begin with a revival of spirituality, for National self-respect could only be aroused and the headlong rush towards imitation of western methods could only be checked, by substituting spirituality and idealism for material- ism. Great success attended the work, and she then added to it educational activities, so as to appeal to the citizens of the future and shape their aspirations towards Nation-hood, as an integral part of the coming World- Empire. Cautiously she carried on some Social Reform activities, organising propaganda against child-marriage, and in favour of foreign travel, helping the latter by the establish- ment of an Indian Hostel in London,^ and of a Committee of friendly Theosophists who would welcome youths arriving in England as strangers. For many years many of her more attached followers have been pledged to delay the marrying of their children for some years beyond the custom of their caste and neighbourhood. In Politics, she has urged the larger ideals, and has, especially in England, spoken for the just claims of India.

' This is an error; we only kept a register of lodging-houses with trustworthy landladies, and of private families where Indian lads would be taken as paying guests.

38 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Now another step has been taken, and some of the best T. S. and E. S. workers enrolled themselves on the 20th September, 1913, in a band who have taken the following sweeping promise :

" Believing that the best interests of India lie in her rising into ordered freedom under the British Crown, in the casting away of every custom which prevents union among all who dwell within her borders, and in the restoration to Hinduism of social flexibility and brotherly feeling,

I Promise:

1. To disregard all restrictions based on Caste.

2. Not to marry my sons while they are still

minors, nor my daughters till they have entered their seventeenth year. (* Marry * includes any ceremony which widows one party on the death of the other J

3. To educate my wife and daughters — and the

other women of my family so far as they will permit— to promote girls' education, and to discountenance the seclusion of women.

4. To promote the education of the masses as

far as lies in my power.

5. To ignore all colour distinctions in social and

political life, and to do what I can to promote the free entry of coloured races into all countries on the same footing as white immigrants.

STEP BY STEP 39

6. To oppose actively any social ostracism of

widows who remarry.

7. To promote union among the workers in the

fields of spiritual, educational, social and political progress, under the headship and direction of the Indian National Congress.

Breach of any clause entails expulsion from the organisation. Those who are not prepared to take the whole of this, may take any clause or clauses which they feel they can work for. Thus some who are in Government Service, take all but 7, as they cannot participate in the Indian National Congress as a movement. Non-Hindus take clauses 4, 5 and 7."

On the 21st another meeting was held of all who were working for education, or social or political reform. Various matters were discussed, and the members agreed to do everything possible in their respective neighbourhoods to unify the various bodies engaged in progressive work ; to establish Libraries for books about the four departments of the forward movement ; to form translation committees for the publication of leaflets and pamphlets for propaganda purposes. The co- operative movement was recognised as one of vital importance in the department of Social Reform.

Mrs. Annie Besant's carefully planned and sequential work of the last twenty years seems to be issuing in her carrying with her the bulk of the Theosophical Society — while guarding it from

40 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

committing itself as a whole to any special opinions or activities— along the line of National Service to India, just as in England she is leading the way along a similar path, ventilating plans for profound social reorganisation, with love instead of hatred as an inspiration. She aims at the ever-closer union of the British and Indian races by mutual under- standing and mutual respect. The present bold step has been led up to very gradually and quietly, and its effect on Indian public life will be watched with interest.

To this was added a second leaflet :

Some earnest workers for Social and Religious Reform have determined to make a resolute effort to serve India by bringing about the changes neces- sary to enable her to take her equal place among the Self-Governing Nations which owe allegiance to the British Crown. They are prepared to sacrifice themselves for this purpose, and to face the difficult- ies in the way of all who are ahead of their time, allying themselves with all who are working for the same end. With this object in view they have taken the following promise :

(Promise as before)

It is earnestly hoped that many religious Hindus will join this band of workers, in order that they may preserve to India the ancient and priceless religion of Hinduism, now threatened with decay by its practical separation from the Movement of

STEP BY STEP 41

Progress in India. The splendid heritage of spiritu- ality and philosophy transmitted from the past, is in danger of being identified with a narrow and unprogressive orthodoxy ; the life of a religion is shown by its power to adapt itself to new conditions, and while its roots are deeply struck into the past, its branches must spread far and wide, and shelter all progressive movements into which the life of the Nation is flowing. Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Islam, are moving forwards towards a future in which all shall dwell together in civic amity, and shall co-operate for the common good. Hinduism, the oldest and the most widely spread faith in India, must take her place with the sister faiths, and must no longer stand apart in social isolation. Let her cast away the unessentials, and cling only to the essentials — the Immanence of God and the Soli- darity of Man. All gracious customs and elevating traditions may be followed by her children, but not imposed on the unwilling, nor used as barriers to prevent social union. So shall she become a unifier instead of a divider, and again assert her glory as the most liberal of religions, the model of an active spirituality which inspires intellectual vigour, moral purity, and national prosperity.

In October and November, 1913, a series of eight lectures was delivered, each presided over by a well-known Indian gentleman, publicly connected with the subject of the

42 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

lecture. They formed the public beginning of the new campaign. They aroused very great interest in Madras, and were on the following subjects :

Foreign Travel : Chairman — Dr. S. Subramania Iyer, late Acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.

Child-Marriage and Its Results : Chairman — The Hon. Dewan Bahadur T. Sadasiva Iyer, M.L., Acting Judge of the Madras High Court.

Our Duty to the Depressed Classes : Chairman — The Hon. Justice B. Tyabji.

Indian Industries as Related to Self-Govern- ment: Chairman— Dewan Bahadur. M. Adi Narayana lyah.

Appendix to the above Lecture.

1. Exports.

2. Weaving.

3. Political Effects.

4. Moral Effects.

Mass Education : Chairman — The Hon. Justice Miller.

The Education of Indian Girls : Chairman — The Hon. Mr. P. S. Sivaswami Aiyer, C.I. E.,C.S.L, Indian Member of the Executive Council, Madras.

STEP BY STEP 43

The Colour Bar in England, the Colonies, and India : Chairman— The Hon. Mr. Kesava Pillai.

The Passing of the Caste System : Chairman — Dewan Bahadur L. A. Govindaraghava Iyer.

The lectures were published as a book, which has had a very large circulation, under the title, Wake Up, India. The preface explain- ed its genesis, and concluded with the signifi- cant words : " May the Guardian of India bless this effort, inspired by Him."

Those who care to read those lectures will see how the idea of a Self-Governing India under- lay the changes proposed. In recommending foreign travel : I asked :

What are you looking for in the future, friends ? always to remain as you are, largely aliens in your own country ? or are you thinking of the time to which the late reforms are pointing, that gradually you will rise step by step, that gradually you will exercise real authority in your own land, nay, that after a time there will not only be a Parliament of India in which Indians will sit, but an Imperial Council gathered round the person of the King, in which Self-Governing India will have her representatives, as much as any other constituent

44 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

part of this vast world-wide Empire. You know that my belief is that England and India are necessary the one to the other, and that the worst injury that any one can do to either is to tear these two lands apart. But union in the future will have to go on the lines of mutual respect, of liberty, of recognition of the place of Indians in India . . . there shall be one great Central Council, wherein the whole of the great Empire shall be represented. For many long years I have believed that this was coming, but I see now that it has unexpectedly come within the range of practical politics . . . I hold it up to you as an ideal to be kept before the eyes of educated India : that you will have the village Panchayat ; that you will then have the District Council, or the Municipal body ; that you will have your Provincial bodies ; that you will have your National body, representing India as a whole — not an unauthoritative Congress but a Parliament of India, where her people's will can be carried out in the future ; then, crowning the whole, with all these Parliaments in all the many States that own our King-Emperor — whom may God long preserve — a Council of the wisest of every Nation gathered round him, a Council of the noblest of every people, a Council marked out by the character, the honour, the learning of its members ; and India shall send her sons, as Canada and Australia and New Zealand and South Africa shall send theirs — the great Council of the Empire, ruling the whole under George V as King. That is what is coming.

STEP BY STEP 45

In speaking on Industries, I said that my mind was set "on the building up of India into a mighty Self-Governing Community " ; that the old system of government in India, more than any other, showed " a genius for Self- Government in the people ; it shows that the Indian, as it were by nature, is capable of guiding, of shaping, of controlling his own affairs". That " competent Self-Government, effective Self-Government, can only be carried on over an area where the people who compose the governing body understand the questions with which they have to deal." I submitted that " the ancient system prevalent here dealt with things in a much more practical way, a way which made Self-Government at once effective, competent and real ". If the future is to be built on the past, then we must have the Village Councils, the " grouped villages " Councils, and so on in extending areas to the District and Provincial Councils or local Parliaments,

46 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

and above them the National Parliament, which would send representatives to the Im- perial Council. None would be without a share in governing, but his power would be limited to the area over which his knowledge extended, and " there would be no barrier anywhere to the rising of the competent ". There would be Individual Politics, or Civics, the training of the good citizen ; Municipal Politics, includ- ing the grades of Councils from the Village to the Province ; National Politics, the concerns of the Nation, dealt with in the National Parlia- ment ; Imperial Politics, dealing with the Empire and with international questions in the Imperial Council. I then dealt with agriculture, utilising Japanese experiments, village crafts and guilds, linking them with the Local Coun- cils, showing how India might have " a happy, contented, agricultural and industrial popula- tion, which at present exists in no country in the world ", I pointed out also how Co-operative

STEP BY STEP 47

Societies would work in, helping home in- dustries, cottage industries, embroidery and the "spinning of thread, which again is a woman's industry," while the men might weave. Details on weaving and other matters were given in the appendices — proposals worked out, and how they were connected with Self-Government, not mere rhapsodies on the charka and khaddar, as nine years later.

If I am to forecast the " Future of Indian Politics," I must make it clear that I believe that the destinies of Nations are planned by the Occult Hierarchy which rules the world, and are not merely the struggles, defeats, and victories, directed by Rulers, Generals, Admirals, Judges, Statesmen, and Parlia- ments, the actors on the stage of the World Drama. I believe that men and women, by the countless choices between the selfish and the unselfish, between personal gain and

48 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

self-sacrificing service, in their preceding lives^ fit themselves to play the respective leading parts of hero and villain, the smaller parts of subsidiary actors and nondescript supers in any special Act of the World Play, and I acknowledge that a Nation, a collective Will, may accept or reject an opportunity offered to it at some particular epoch, and that individuals are re-incarnated into Nations to play the parts demanded by the Great Plan, or World Drama, as when the spectator is surprised to see an army " of lions command- ed by asses," in some tragedy in ^ Nation's life. With infinite skill, the passions and desires of men, whether good or evil, are utilised to subserve the working out of the divine purpose of evolution, that men may rise higher and higher in the Universe which lives in its perfection in the Heart of God, and is gradually worked out in the evolution of Man. "Thou makest the

STEP BY STEP 49

wrath of man to praise Thee!" sang an ancient Seer, overwhelmed with a glimpse of the Power, Wisdom and Beauty of the majestic Work.

The next step towards India's splendid destiny— hers if she rises to it during the present time of her opportunity — was to find a leader for the movement embodying the fourfold Ideal. Would the Congress take up the suggestion made in clause 7 of the promise of the Brothers of Service, and be that leader, as it seemed to me was its right ? I therefore wrote to Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, to ask whether the National Congress would put itself at the head, and take the direction, of a National movement embodying religious, educational and social, as well as political, reforms. It seemed to me that the National Congress could not ultimately suc- ceed, unless its programme included the four as- pects of National Life, but I felt that those who

50 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

had created and led the Congress were those who had the right to decide its action, and that I had no right beyond making the suggestion. Sir Pherozeshah wrote to me that the question had arisen very early in the life of the Congress, and that it had been decided that opinions varied so much on religious, educational and social questions, that it was thought to be best that those who agreed on the broad lines of Political Reform should not mar their unity by introducing other matters. He wrote very kindly and invited me to talk things over with him, and I gladly assented, but his illness prevented the meeting. Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji agreed with him as to keeping the political movement separate. I therefore started a week- ly newspaper. The Common-weal^ on January 2, 1914, to embody the fourfold Ideal, and an article with the caption, " Our Policy " sets it forth. Declaring that a free platform should be kept by the journal for the thoughtful

STEP BY STEP 51

discussion of the four classes of subjects, it

gave its editorial policy :

The editorial policy regards the four great functions of human life — belonging to the Spirit, the Mind, the Emotions and the Body — as being differ- ent expressions of One Life, and as therefore closely inter-related. They form the four great departments of National Reform in every country, and any antagonism between them, nay, any mutual coldness or indifference, throws the whole Body Politic out of health.

In India, this isolation is peculiarly mischievous, because, as Mr. A. O. Hume pointed out in 1885: ** The earnest and unselfish labourers for progress in this country constitute but an infinitesimal fraction of the population, a fraction that becomes absolutely inappreciable if further subdivided." We stand, then, for Union among all workers in the National Cause, and ask only to be allowed to serve it in any of the four great departments.

In Religion, \i stood for individual liberty, mutual respect, regarding all religions as ways to God, and recognising the religious con- sciousness, not any outer authority, as the Inner Ruler of each. It asked that all should be protected in their liberty, and that none

52 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

should be privileged. In Education^ it pleaded for flexibility, fewer examinations, for en- couragement of initiative in teachers and pupils, inclusion of physical, moral and religious culture, the lowering of fees, the encourage- ment of the vernaculars and classical languages of India, more schools and colleges, more technical and artistic instruction, education of girls and of the masses, and generally for universal education on National lines, " with an open path from primary schools through higher schools to the Universities ". In Social Reform^ it advocated foreign travel, co-opera- tion, uplift of the submerged classes, with abo- lition of child-marriage, seclusion of women, colour bar and the caste system. I add the full statement of the Political Reform desired, because it outlines what we meant by Self- Government and the way to it and the spirit in which it was framed, a spirit of union, love, and co-operation, not of disunion, hatred and

STEP BY STEP 53

non-co-operation. It indicates our political aim, the Free Future of India, that which we laboured for in the Home Rule League, the Congress-League Scheme, the Montagu- Chelmsford Reforms, the working of Reforms, and in the later opposition to the Non-Co- Operation movement, led by Mr. Gandhi. It runs :

In Political Reform we aim at the building up of complete Self-Government from Village Councils, through District and Municipal Boards and Provincial Legislative Assemblies, to a National Parliament, equal in its powers to the legislative bodies of the Seif-Governing Colonies, by whatever name these may be called ; also at the direct representation of India in the Imperial Parliament, when that body shall contain representatives of the Self-Governing States of the Empire. All measures that tend in this direction we shall support, and all that retard it we shall oppose. We recognise the National Congress and the non-official members of represen- tative bodies as voicing the will of India. We claim an open path for Indians to every post in their native land, as promised by the Proclamation of 1858, and the abolition of every law that places them in a position inferior to that enjoyed by the English. We ask that capacity and high character shall

54 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

determine all appointments to office, and that colour and religion shall be entirely disregarded as qualifications.

One thing that lies very near to our heart is to draw Great Britain and India nearer to each other, by making known in Great Britain something of Indian movements, and of the men who will influence from here the destinies of the Empire.

In 1914, I went to England, and there tried, but failed, to form a little party in the House of Commons to promote Indian interests. It failed because the Home Rule question in Ireland was before the House, and its sup- porters feared to embarrass Mr. Asquith, the then Premier, by starting a party advocating Home Rule for India. However, I lectured for India, and in the Great Queen's Hall, Earl Brassey in the Chair, I explained her griev- ances and her needs, and finally declared that " The price of India's loyalty is India's Free- dom." Mr. Jinnah and Lala Lajpat Rai supported me, and the meeting was a great success.

STEP BY STEP 55

On my return to India, I started a daily newspaper to advocate the same policy as that of The Commonweal, purchasing The Madras Standai^d. The first number was issued on July 14, 1914, and it was soon renamed New India. It sounded out the Self-Government note of 1906 and urged that instead of asking for Reforms piecemeal, we should bend our energies to win Self-Govern- ment, Home Rule, and make the reforms for ourselves. In an article on July 23, on " National Education," I pleaded that the coming Hindu University should be a " National," not a " Government " University, with power to make its own curriculum, and controlled by Indians. (Both points were gained.) In that article occurs the following :

Let an Englishman imagine what Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge would be, if they were held and administered by Germans ; would they any longer be nurseries of English heroism, of English patriotism ? Would English boys brought

56 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

up on German history, or biographies of German heroes, on the lives of Blucher and Bismarck, become the Englishmen that carry the English flag to every quarter of the globe ? Let them then realise how Indians feel, who have behind them a civilisation of thousands of years, and whose sons are now brought up on lives which make them regard their forefathers— who produced the Upanishats, the Mahdbharata, the dramas of Kalidasa, the commen- taries of Sharikaracharya, Ramanuja and Madhva, the devotion of Tukaram, Kabir and Guru Nanak, the valour of Pratap Singh, the statesmanship of Akbar— as a crowd of superstitious dreamers and impracticable visionaries, while they are taught to look to Nelson and Wellington as heroes, and to regard important Indian history as beginning with Clive and Warren Hastings. We do not blame the Government ; how should Englishmen understand the, to them, foreign splendours of an ancient eastern land ? They have given us of their best, and never will India forget that we owe to them the uplifting before Indian eyes of the ideals of Liberty and Self- Government, the inspiration of ordered Freedom, of National self-consciousness; we owe to them the training of the present generation of vakils, doctors, great merchants, who founded and have carried on the National Congress, who formed Indian public opinion, the " educated minority," regarded by The Times with a hatred born of fear, and by India as its present glory, and its future hope.

STEP BY STEP 57

But we cannot sacrifice Indian Nationality on the altar of our gratitude to our English rulers. And that gratitude is best shown by carrying into practice what they have taught us as to the value of patriotism and public spirit, as exemplified in them- selves, offering them the highest compliment of imitation. Moreover we know that we still need their help in this transition period, during which an ancient civilisation is transforming itself into a modern one ; and that help will be most gratefully welcomed if the condition of its acceptance be not the confession of National inferiority. England and India will be most closely bound together if they work hand in hand and heart with heart, to make India a Self-Governing community in the great Federated Empire, whose majestic outlines are dimly seen in the sky of the future.

The War did not break out until the August of that year, and when I left England for Home in June, there was no shadow to be seen of the rapidly approaching storm. It cannot, then, be pretended, with any truth or honesty, that India made her first move to- wards Self-Government as a result of the War, and took advantage of the danger and difficulties into which Britain was plunged.

\

58 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

On the contrary, when War broke out, India's first impulse, first movement, was to spring to the side of Britain, to help her, to fight beside her, to live or die with her. To India, Germany embodied Autocracy, and Britain Liberty. She thrilled to the words of Asquith and Lloyd George. She was aflame with enthusiastic pride and love. The Madras Bar volunteered with eagerness, and the first chill came with the rejection of their warm-hearted enthu- siasm. The offer of their manhood refused, they gave their money, and the first Hospital Ship was that of Madras. I embodied in my Editorial Notes in The Theosophist for November, 1914, the feelings which throbbed in all our hearts in those first months of War, and I put it on record here, that I may bear witness for those who worked politically in India from 1914 to 1919 for the ideals for which our men, Indians and English alike, were fighting in the trenches of north-eastern

STEP BY STEP 59

France and Flanders, in Gallipoli, in Mesopo- tamia, in Palestine, in East Africa, that they fought here against the autocracy which India and Britain were destroying in Europe, with the words of English leaders on their lips, and the love of English Freedom in their hearts. The war for Liberty abroad fired us to win Liberty at Home, that our soldiers might return to an India growing into Freedom. The wave of passion for Liberty that swept over the world, and at last drove America into the War, with Wilson's ringing words, could not leave India untouched, but set her heart a- throbbing. And so I wrote :

All the world over is the tumult of War ; the lurid light of devastated homes blazes out from the burning towns of Belgium ; the relics of past ages in Louvain and Rheims and Dinant have been hammered into pieces by the new hammer of Thor j hundreds of thousands of men, killed or wounded, strew the fields that should have been yellowing for the sickle ; all the fair peaceful industries of common life are whelmed in one red ruin.

60 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

And for what is all this pain, this agony of wrenched muscles and shattered limbs, this blasting of bright young lives, this destruction of glowing hopes ? In the pictures of the killed that appear in the illustrated papers, there are so many faces glad with the sunshine of life, bright faces of young manhood, dawning into virility, faces that mothers must have loved so dearly, must have kissed so passionately as they sent them forth. As one looks at them, one sees them trampled into crimson mud, shattered by bursting shell, riven by cut of sabre, and is glad that the earth should hide the horror of what was once so fair. Clear eyes, looking out so brightly upon joyous life, that have gazed unflinch- ingly into the eyes of death. Lips, still showing the gracious curves of youth, that hardened in the battle-crash, to relax again only in the peace of death.

And all for what ? For what the broken hearts in all the homes in which these gallant lads were light and joy ? For what the anguish of the widows of these other men, beyond the first flush of youth, who left behind them their earth's treasure, with the children who shall watch for their father's coming, useless watching, for homeward he will never come again ? For what the myriads of darkened homes, whose breadwinners, husbands and sons, fathers and lovers, find no record in the pictured pages, though dear to the hearts that love them as are the noble and wealthy who thereon have their place ? For what the world's great

STEP BY STEP 61

anguish, mourning over her slaughtered sons? For what ?

There have been wars begun for transient objects, for the conquest of a piece of land, for the weakening of a rival, for the gaining of added power,, begun because of ambition, of greed, of jealousy, of insult. In such wars, lives are flung away for trifles, though the men who suffer in them, or who die, win out of their own anguish added strength and beauty of character, full reward for the pain endured ; for they return with the spoils of victory into new avenues of ascending life, and with them it is very well. Such wars are evil in their origin,, however much the divine alchemy may transmute the base into fine gold.

But this War is none of these. In this War mighty Principles are battling for the mastery.*^ Ideals are locked in deadly combat. The direction of the march of our present civilisation, upwards or downwards, depends on the issue of tHe struggle. Two Ideals of World-Empire are balanced on the scales of the future. That is what raises this War above all others known in the brief history of the West ; it is the latest of the pivots on which, in successive ages, the immediate future of the world has turned. To die, battling for the Right, is the gladdest fate that can befall the youth in the joy of his dawning manhood, the man in the pride of his strength, the elder in the wisdom of his maturity, aye,, and the aged in the rich splendour of his whitened

62 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

head. To be wounded in this War is to be enrolled in the ranks of Humanity's Warriors, to have felt the stroke of the sacrificial knife, to bear in the mortal body the glorious scars of an immortal struggle.

Of the two possible World-Empires, that of ^ Great Britain and that of Germany, one is already far advanced in the making and shows its quality, with Dominions and Colonies, with India at its side. The other is but in embryo, but can be judged by its theories, with the small examples available as to the fashion of their outworking in the few Colonies that it is founding, the outlining of the vmborn embryo.

The first embodies — though as yet but partially realised — the Ideal of Freedom ; of ever-increasing Self-Government ; of Peoples rising into power ^-- and self-development along their own lines ; of a Supreme Government " broad-based upon the People's Will " ; of fair and just treatment of undeveloped races, aiding not enslaving them ; it embodies the embryo of the splendid Democracy of the Future ; of the New Civilisation, co-operative, peaceful, progressive, artistic, just, and free — a Brotherhood of Nations, whether the Nations be inside or outside the World-Empire. This is the Ideal ; and that Great Britain has set her feet in the path which leads to it is proved, not only by her past interior history with its struggles towards Liberty, but also by her granting of autonomy to her Colonies, her formation of the beginnings of Self-Government in India, her constantly improving

STEP BY STEP 63

attitude towards the undeveloped races — as in using the Salvation Army to civilise the criminal tribes in India — all promising advances towards the Ideal. Moreover, she has ever sheltered the oppressed exiles, flying to her shores for refuge against their tyrants — the names of Kossuth, Mazzini, Kropotkin, shine out gloriously as witnesses in her favour ; she has fought against the slave-trade and wellnigh abolished it. And at the present moment she is fighting in defence of keeping faith with those too small to exact it ; in defence of Treaty obligations and the sanctity of a Nation's pledged word ; in defence of National Honour, of Justice to the weak, of that Law, obedience to which by the strong States is the only guarantee of future Peace, the only safeguard of Society against the tyranny of brute Strength. For all this England is fighting, when she might have stood aside, selfish and at ease, watching her neighbours tearing each other into pieces, waiting until their exhaustion made it possible for her to impose her will. Instead of thus remaining, she has sprung forward, knight-errant of Liberty, servant of Duty. With possible danger of Civil War behind her, with supposed possible revolt in South Africa and India, with shameful bribes offered for her standing aside, she spurned all lower reasonings, and springing to he.r feet, sent out a lion's roar of defiance to the breakers of treaties, uttered a ringing shout for help to her peoples, flung her little army to the front — a veritable David against Goliath— to gain time, time.

64 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

that the hosts might gather, to hold the enemy back at all costs, let die who might of her children ; called for men to her standard, men from the nobles, from the professions, from the trades, men from the plough, from the forge, from the mine, from the furnace ; and this not for gain — she has naught to gain from the War — but because she loved Liberty, Honour, Justice, Law, better than life or treasure, that she counted glorious Death a thousandfold more desirable than shameful existence bought by cowardly ease. For this, the Nations bless her ; for this, her dying Sons adore her ; for this. History shall applaud her ; for this, shall the World-Empire be hers with the consent of all Free Peoples, and she shall be the Protector, not the Tyrant, of Humanity.

The second claimant of World-Empire em- bodies the Ideal of Autocracy founded on Force. The candidate proclaims himself the War Lord, and in his realm no Master save himself ; he declares to his army, as he flings his sword into the scale of War :

Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me; on me, as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword, and His Vicegerent. Woe to the disobedient. Death to cowards and unbelievers.

The thinkers, the teachers of his people, have formulated the theory of the World-Empire ; it recognises no law in dealing with States save that of Strength, no arbitrament save War. Its own self-interest is declared to be its only motive ; its

STEP BY STEP 65

morality is based on the increase of the power of its Empire; the weak must have no rights; the conquered Nations must be **left only eyes to weep with " ; woe to the conquered ! woe to the weak ! woe to the helpless ! all religions save the Religion of Force are superstitious, their morality is outgrown. Murder, robbery, arson — all are per- missible, nay, praiseworthy in invading hosts. Mercy is contemptible. Chivalry is an anachronism. Compassion is feebleness. Art and Literature have no sanctity. The women, the children, the aged — they are all weak ; why should not strong men use them as they will ? All undeveloped races are the prey of the " civilised ". And we are not left without signs of the application of the theory. Herr Schlettwein instructs the German Reichstag on the " Principles of Colonisation " :

The Hereros must be compelled to work, and to work without compensation and in return for their food only. Forced labour for years is only a just punishment, and at the same time it is the best method of training them. The feelings of Christ- ianity and philanthropy, with which the missionaries work, must for the present be repudiated with all energy.

General von Trotha, tired even of enslaving them, proclaims :

The Herero people must now leave the land. If it refuses I shall compel it with the gun. Within the German frontier every Herero, with or without weapon, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall take charge of no more women and children, but shall drive them back to their people or let them be shot at.

The proclamation was carried out ; thousands were shot ; thousands were " driven into a waterless 5

66 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

desert where they perished of hunger and thirst ". On this sample, we refuse the goods offered. Moreover, we have seen the Empire at work, carrying out in Belgium its theories of murder, rape, and loot. The " chosen people of the (German) God " stink in the nostrils of Europe. This embryo-Empire of the bottomless pit, con- ceived of Hatred and shaped in the womb of Ambi- tion, must never come to the birth. It is the New Barbarism ; it is the antithesis of all that is noble, compassionate, and humane. Humanity knows the ways of Goths, Vandals and Huns, the Berserker rage of the Vikings ; it refuses to bow down before the Idol of Force, the Negation of Law, of Freedom, of Justice and of Peace. They that make the sword the arbitrament shall perish by the sword. The War Germany has provoked, as her road to Empire, shall crush her militarism, free her people, and usher in the reign of Peace.

Because these things are so, because the fate of the next Age of the World turns now on the choice made by the Nations, I call on all who are pledged to Universal Brotherhood, all Theosophists the world over, to stand for Right against Might, Law against Force, Freedom against Slavery, Brother- hood against Tyranny.

Surely that was not a spirit of taking advan- tage of the War to press a new claim for Dominion status.

CHAPTER II A NEW DEPARTURE

At the Twenty-ninth National Congress in Madras in December, 1914, a new departure was taken. (For those who may be puzzled, on referring to the Congress Reports, by find- ing this Congress called the Twenty-ninth, instead of the Thirtieth, I may explain that the Congress broken up at Surat in 1907 was the Twenty-third. It was adjourned, not dis- solved, and met again at Madras, in 1908, with the same President, the Hon. Mr. Rash Bihari Ghose, as still the Twenty-third Congress. Thenceforward the number of the Congress is one less than it should be according to the years since 1885.)

Before the Congress of 1914 met, a fateful decision had been taken, which re-united the

68 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Indian political party, split in two at Surat in : 1907, and thereafter known as" Extremists'* and " Congressmen ". The union completed at Lucknow, in 1916, was again threatened in 1918, and broken definitely in 1919 over the Reform Act of that year. On that occasion, however, the Congress went with the " Ex- tremists," and the " Moderates " and '' Nation- al Home Rulers " took no further part in it, the Special Congress of 1920, at Calcutta, adopting Mr. Gandhi's method of Non-Co- Operation, and the Annual Congress at Nag- pur, 1920, changing its creed and constitution. That, however, is only a hasty glance forward. We must return to 1914.

Staying with Mr. Gokhale in the Servants of India Society's home in Poena, in the autumn of 1914, he asked me to go to Mr. Tilak, his old enemy, and see if a via media could not be found for joining into one body all who desir- ed India's freedom, so that the great split made

A NEW DEPARTURE 69

at Surat might be healed. He showed me the outline of Reforms that he had drawn up, and suggested that Mr. Tilak and his powerful party might re-enter the Congress, and a United India might work for Self-Government within the Empire on "Colonial lines," as the creed of the Congress laid down. I went and saw Mr. Tilak — who had been a member of the Theosophical Society in the early days, as were so many of the original Congressmen — and we had some conversations. Ultimate- ly, we came to a preliminary agreement ; Mr. Tilak came to see Mr. Gokhale, and it was agreed that a proposal, drawn up by Mr. Gokhale, should be put before the coming Congress, to open the way for the return into the Congress of the " Extremists," as they were then called. Unhappily, a cruel accusa- tion was flung at Mr. Gokhale, touching his honour, just before the Congress, and he sent a message to me, bidding me not bring forward

70 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

his proposal. I, of course dropped it, but having promised to place before the Committee a suggestion that certain modifications should be made in the rule for election of delegates, and there being no time to communicate with Mr. Gokhale, I made, but did not carry, that proposal, entirely on my own account. He was angry with me for the moment, but when I pointed out that, with his consent, I had pledged myself to do so, he, ever just, approved, and said that, some months later, his proposal might be made, but he could not move then. Alas! he passed away in the February of 1915 — for those who like coincidences, I may note that he left us on February 19th, the day on which occurred, in 1861, the Liberation of the Russian serfs, a good day for one who was one of the Liberators of India. Still, in the Congress of 1915, the necessary change was made, and the "Tilak party" rejoined the Congress in 1916, at Lucknow.

A NEW DEPARTURE 71

The 1914 Congress began, as usual, with votes of condolence on deaths which had occurred during the year, and then passed the following resolution, representing the feelings of India towards Britain and the War :

IV. Resolved — (a) that this Congress desires to convey to His Majesty the King-Emperor and the people of England its profound devotion to the Throne, its unswerving allegiance to the British connection, and its firm resolve to stand by the Empire, at all hazards and at all costs.

(6) That this Congress places on record the deep sense of gratitude and the enthusiasm which the Royal Message, addressed to the Princes and Peoples of India at the beginning of the War, has evoked throughout the length and breadth of the country, and which strikingly illustrates His Majesty's solicitude and sympathy for them, and strengthens the bond which unites the Princes and Peoples of India to His Royal House and the person of His Gracious Majesty.

It proceeded to approve warmly the des- patch of the India Expeditionary Force, and asked for military training.

V. Resolved — That this Congress notes with gratitude and satisfaction the despatch of the Indian

72 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Expeditionary Force to the theatre of War, and begs to offer to H.E. the Viceroy the most heart- felt thanks for affording to the people of India an opportunity of showing that, as equal subjects of His Majesty, they are prepared to fight shoulder to shoulder with the people of other parts of the Empire in defence of right and justice, and the cause of the Empire.

VI. Resolved — That this Congress urges on the Government the necessity, wisdom, and justice, of throwing open the higher offices in the Army to Indians, and of establishing in the country Military Schools and Colleges, where they may be trained for a military career as officers in the Indian Army. In recognition of the equal rights of citizenship of the people of India with the rest of the Empire, and in view of their proved loyalty so unmistakably and spontaneously manifested, and the strongly expressed desire of all classes and grades, to bear arms in the service of the Crown and of the Empire, this Congress urges upon the Government the necessity of re-organising the present system of volunteering, so as to enable the people of this country, without distinction of race or class, to enlist themselves as citizen-soldiers of the Empire.

The stress laid on the equal rights of citizenship will be noted, as well as the enrol- ment " without distinction of race or class " of "citizen-soldiers of the Empire ". Modifications

A NEW DEPARTURE 73

of the Arms Act were asked for, so that it should " apply equally to all persons residing in or visiting India," and the pride of the Nation in its troops in the firing-line was warmly expressed. In relation to Indians abroad, the suggestion of the Viceroy (Lord Hardinge) was approved that Reciprocity should be the rule between India and the Colonies, and it remarked that

any policy of Reciprocity to be effective and acceptable to the people of India must proceed on the basis that the Government of India should possess and exercise the same power of dealing with the Colonies as they possess and exercise with regard to India.

This assertion of the equality of India with the Self-Governing Colonies marks the sense of the Congress that the Crown, in calling for the equality of India with those Colonies in duty to, and in suffering and sacrifice for, the Empire, had implicitly and de facto acknow- ledged her equality with them in the Empire,

74 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

and in Resolution X it asked that that equality might also be recognised de jure. As a matter of fact, there was no equality of sacrifice in the Colonies and India, for India had long, at a huge and ever-increasing cost, maintained on a War footing an Army far beyond her needs, and it was this which enabled Lord Hardinge to fling across the seas into France an Arm.y ready to take the field, right athwart the path to Paris between the advancing hosts of Germany and the splendid, but worn out, " contemptible little Army " of Britain ; to falsify the boast of the Kaiser that he would " dine in Paris in a fortnight " ; to save Britain in the hour of her bitter need. The Germans would have won while the Colonies were preparing and Britain was training their raw levies after they landed ; and the frantic enthusiasm with which Parliament welcomed the arrival of the Indians, at that critical moment, showed its sense of the imminence of

A NEW DEPARTURE 75

Britain's peril, and of the greatness of the service rendered to the Empire by India. Britain would doubtless have won in the end, but, with the Germans in Paris, she would probably have suffered the horrors of invasion.

As the enthusiasm faded with the passing of the immediate peril, and troops poured in in from the Colonies, while few of that first Army remained alive, 1 will put on record here the evidence of General Sir James Willcocks, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., D.S.O., LL.D., in his invaluable book With the Indians in France, published in 1920. It is dedicated :

To MY BRAVE COMRADES

OF ALL RANKS OF THE INDIAN ARMY

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, WHICH IS AN

EARNEST ENDEAVOUR TO RECORD THEIR

LOYALTY AND UNPERISHABLE VALOUR

ON THE BATTLE-FIELDS OF

FRANCE AND BELGIUM

76 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Sir James Willcocks claims, in his Introduc- tion that " few, if any, have a better knowledge of the brave Indian soldiers and the deeds they performed than I have ". He remarks that they could not have done what they did " without the help and example of their illustrious comrades of the Scotch, Irish and English battalions which formed part of each brigade, or of the splendid Territorial units which later joined us, and the superb British artillery which paved the way for all our efforts. But," he said only too truly, "of these History will assuredly furnish a brilliant account. It is not always so of Indian troops . . . The rank and file will furnish no writers to thrill the generations to come ; they will just pass with the great masses of India, content that they have done their duty and been faithful to their salt." I remember how one of the Anzacs said, after returning to Australia : " An Indian was a good pal to have

A NEW DEPARTURE 77

beside you in the trenches." He concludes

the Introduction by saying that it is due to

India that the facts should be told ;

The day is past when that great portion of our Empire could be kept in comparative darkness ; the light is dawning, and the Great War has opened to her an opportunity which she never had before. Her sons have shared the glory of the Empire. From the boggy fields and trenches of Flanders and the desert sands of Egypt ; from the immortal heights of Gallipoli ; from the burning plains of Mesopotamia and the impenetrable jungles of East Africa, comes up with one voice, from the thousands who fought and bled for England :

India has taken a new birth ;

The heavens above, the sea, the earth

Have changed for aye, the darkness dies. Light has illumined all men's eyes,

Since Armageddon's day.

Sir James commanded for a year an Indian Army Corps, " for the first time in history to be employed in Europe ". He remarks that " the Army of India was little understood in Great Britain, where newspaper writers thought that it was composed of Sikhs and Gurkhas," where a Sikh squadron was

78 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

described as " fierce turbaned Muslims on fiery Arab steeds," and the artillery " composed of the finest British batteries," " superbly horsed," was reported by one paper as consisting of " mountain guns borne on Abyssinian mules ". But the gem was from a foreign paper, announcing the arrival of the first Army Corps at Marseille :

This Corps has been raised and equipped en- tirely at the expense of three great Indian Princes, who are now occupying the finest hotel in Mar- seille. Their names are Prince Sikya (evidently a corruption of Sikh) ; Prince Gorok (Gurkhas) ; and Prince Balukin (meant for Baluchis).

Sir James mentions the special difficulties of the Indians, their old rifles replaced with fresh ones at Marseille, new ammunition, the use of hand-grenades and trench mortars, and other shortages of things, " essential to a force suddenly dumped down from railhead into the trenches ". He says :

I have no desire unnecessarily to string out the manifest disadvantages the Indian Corps laboured

A NEW DEPARTURE 79

under, but I have heard too much the criticisms of our Indian troops by soldiers and civilians, who are without the faintest knowledge of what they talk about, and it is only right that the truth should be known. There is a growing body of Indians who have every desire but no means of ascertaining the facts, and if this book can be of any use in helping to explain to my numberless friends and acquaint- ances in India the splendid deeds of their brethren who fought and bled on the sodden plains of Flan- ders, under handicaps which must have been seen and felt to be understood, I shall be more than rewarded. Moreover, as commander of those troops during a year of war I had opportunities of knowing many details unknown to others, and now that the war is over I am free to write the truth which for years has been of necessity suppressed.

Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the Indian army, it possessed one asset which never stood it in better stead than in France ; its British officers, although far too small in number, were the salt of the earth. As leaders of men, comrades and friends of their Indian officers, sepoys, and sowars, as loyal and brave gentlemen, they could not be surpassed. I always believed in them, but in France my belief was heightened to profound . admiration, and as death took its heavy toll day by day, I knew that by no means could they be re- placed ; for the great essential was that they should know their men and their language, and this became

80 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

impossible as India sent more and more troops to the various theatres of war.

Next to the British were the Indian officers, most of them men who had earned their commis- sions by brave and loyal service, of fighting stock, with martial traditions, ready to give their lives for their King-Emperor, proud of their profession of arms ; they formed the essential link between the British officers and men. In ordinary circumstances in the Field they were well fitted to fill temporarily the place of their lost British leaders.

Despite this, he says ;

One of my chief difficulties at the beginning of this war was to make it understood that the Indians cannot be treated as pure machines, and that they possess national characteristics as varied as those between Scandinavians and Italians. I own that Sir John French and his Staff generally made every allowance for these facts, but there were others who made none ; an Army Corps (no matter its fighting strength in numbers) was an Army Corps and nothing else. An Army Corps was supposed to be able to occupy so many thousand yards of trenches, and the orders were issued by this routine rule.

It might be said the Indian Corps was sent as a Corps, and times were too pressing to go into such details ; this is perhaps true, and we all recognised it at the beginning of the Flanders fighting ; but as

A NEW DEPARTURE 81

time went on and the German attack was beaten off, I saw plainly that you cannot expect a ship to keep up full steam when the engineers and stokers are lying shattered in the hold. And yet those brave men not only filled a big gap in our battered line, but, helped and encouraged by their comrades of the British battalions of the Indian Corps, held it against incessant attack. Minenwerfers, hand gre- nades, and high explosives tore through them and flattened out their trenches ; blood flowed freely ; but as often as they were driven back from their defences they managed to return to them again. India has reason to be proud of her sons, and their children may well tell with pride of the deeds of their fathers.

He shows a clear appreciation of Indian feeling when he says of Indian officers :

They should be given rank corresponding to their British comrades, and precedence equal to, if not above, their civilian confreres. To the ordinary observer like myself, at Darbars and public gather- ings, it was plain that they never received their proper share of Izzat (honour). No doubt I shall be told this was all thought out and arranged by the Government, but I speak from practical experience, not from the edicts of Simla and Delhi. The Indian officer was not treated with the respect which was his due, and which he has earned in arduous service on many fields of war. It was a feeling very 6

82 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

strongly held by them and must be set right. Izzat is a thing little understood by any but Indians, but it is a great driving force ; it raises men in the estimation of their fellows, whilst the loss of it debases them.

In judging the effect of the War on India's outlook, we must take account of the fact that the few survivors, who returned from the early days of the War to their villages, brought with them the memories of their comrades in the trenches, the memories of the white troops they fought against, the memories of the gallant deeds performed by Indian soldiers, and of the honour paid to them in France and England. Thus the villagers came into touch with a larger life, a wider outlook, a know- ledge of free countries, and of the honours won by Indians in the fields, where they fought beside and against the finest white soldiers in the world. I do not think that the share of the War in arousing National pride has been fitly recognised, nor the result of

A NEW DEPARTURE 83

coming back from free countries, where they had fought for freedom and left their dead behind, into a country where, despite all they had suffered, they found themselves still under the " intolerable degradation " of the yoke of a foreign Nation.

To return to the Congress of 1914. The Resolution ran :

X. Resolved — That in view of the profound and avowed loyalty that the people of India have manifested in the present crisis, this Congress appeals to the Government to deepen and perpetuate it, and make it an enduring and valuable asset of the Empire, by removing all invidious distinctions here and abroad, between His Majesty's Indian and other subjects, by redeeming the pledges of Provincial Autonomy contained in the Despatch of the 25th August, 1911, and by taking such measures as may be necessary for the recognition of India as a com- ponent part of a federated Empire, in the full and the free enjoyment of the rights belonging to that status.

Thus was the note struck. The Resolution was moved by the well-known patriot, Mr. Surendranath Bannerji, in a well-reasoned

84 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Speech, basing India's claim on the Proclama- tion of 1858 and the Despatch of August 25, 1911, and declaring in favour of ".a number of administrations, autonomous in all provincial affairs, with the Government of India above them, and possessing powers to interfere in case of mis-government ". He asked the audience to formulate a scheme and press it on the British public. In supporting it, I urged on the younger men, " who will be part of the Self-Governing Nation," to practise the science and art of Government in local bodies, and asked Congress to form a definite scheme of Self-Government to present to England after the War.

After a year of vigorous propaganda the Congress of 1915 ordered its Committees to prepare such a scheme.

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT AGITATION

And very vigorous that propaganda was, all the circumstances of the time co-operating to increase its intensity. In the propaganda, New India and The Commonweal led the way, with stirring articles and outspoken directness, new in Indian politics. It was an English political agitation, carried on with unbroken energy. But other means were adopted, in addition to a daily and a weekly paper. On New Year's Day, 1915, it was proposed to start a " Madras Parliament," /.^., a Debating Society which observed Parliamentary forms, for it was thought that as we were aiming at Home Rule, it would be well to train ourselves

88 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

in the careful study of National problems, and the methods of producing measures accurately and systematically ; the reports of the debates, and the circulation of the Transactions in the form of Acts, would all serve to arouse and discipline political activity. A Committee of 17 persons formed itself early in February, 1915, and drew up rules; the Hon. Mr. Justice Sadasivier was invited to be the first Speaker and accepted the office; Dewan Bahadur L. A. Govindaraghava Iyer, was offered the post of Leader of the House, but as he declined, it was left to the members to elect their own man {Commonweal, February 12, 1915, pp. 125, 126), The inaugural meeting was held on February 14, when, after the registration of members, Annie Besant was elected Prime Minister, and March 6 was fixed for the first business meeting. [Ibid., February 19, p. 136.) In The Commonweal of February 26 the first Ministry is announced (p. 27): Prime

THE GREAT AGITATION 87

Minister and Secretary for the Treasury^ Annie Besant. Under-Secretary (not yet chosen). Local Government Board, T. Rafigachari. Under- Secretary, K. C. Desikachariar. Education, C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar. Under-Secretary, C. Jinarajadasa. Industries, Hon. Mr. B. N. Sarma. Under-Secretary (not yet chosen). Commerce, Rai Sahab G. Soobbiah Chetty. Under-Secretary, C. Gopala Menon. Co-opera- tion, Dewan Bahadur M. Audinarayapa lyah. Under-Secretary, V. Venkatasubbaya. Home Department, Dewan Bahadur L. A. Govinda- raghava Iyer. Under-Secretary, Hon. Mrr V. S. Srinivasa Sastri. R. B. Aingar, Barr-at- Law, was Clerk of the House. The Whips, C. S. Govindaraja Mudaliar and J. R. Aria, The Parliament met on March 6, and its first meeting was held under the shadow of a great loss. I had consulted Mr. Gokhale on the subject and he gave it his "enthusiastic approval," and on February 13 v/ired his wish

B8 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

that it should be helped ; almost a dying wish, as he passed away on February 19. I wrote on February 26 : " Needless to say I had counted on his advice as it went on, for early in 1914, he had accepted me as a fellow- worker in the political field, and I relied on his experience for counsel in any political work, and did not intend to take any step without his sanction. New India was placed at his disposal as soon as purchased, and he had intended to use it in preparation for the next Congress, to which, with improved health he was looking forward." Under his blessing, the Parliament did much useful work. I see names now in the Council of State, the Legislative Assembly, the Madras Legislative Council, who are working in real Parliaments and practised their 'prentice efforts in our local Parliament. The latter died in June, 1917, when three of its mem- bers were interned, and the others threw

THE GREAT AGITATION 89

themselves into the vehement agitation that

brought about the famous Declaration of

August 20, 1917, and released the internees.

The Transactions bore the stirring motto :

We bring the Light that saves, We bring the Morning Star ; Freedom's good things we bring you, Whence ail good things are.

Act I, 1915, was Compulsory Elementary Education, brought in by C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, the most brilliant member of our body, in an admirable speech ; others published were the Madras Pafichayats Act, prepared by Mr. T. Rangachari, the most complete measure on the subject that I have seen and a guide for a futurfe Act ; the Commonwealth of India Act, brought in by myself, and followed by a Supplementary Act on the Indian Judi- cature, brought in by Mr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar ; a Religious Education Act, by Mr. G. Jinarajadasa ; a very full and careful Emigration Act was brought in by Mr. B. P.

90 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Wadia, but was not published. These measures

were very vigorously debated, Mr. G. S.

Arundale making a most dashing leader of the

Opposition.

Another series of papers of which a huge

number were circulated, were the ^^ New

India Political Pamphlets," each of which bore

the motto

How long ere thou take station ? How long ere thralls live free ?

We, in fact, flooded the country with tracts, gave lectures, carried on, as said, a very vigor- ous propaganda.

During this year was also published in The Commonweal^ How India Wrought for Free- dom^ a narrative of the Congress from 1885 to 1914, published later as a book and prefaced by a Historical Introduction, which infuriated the Anglo-Indian Press, because it was a narrative of facts, and could only be abused, not dis- proved.

THE GREAT AGITATION 91

The formation of a Home Rule League was discussed and worked for. The country caught eagerly at the idea, and in September I went to Bombay to consult Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji orfe the subject, and received his hearty approval- The local leaders, however, did not welcome \ the idea, thinking it might weaken the Congress, whereas the hope was to strength- en it. It was because the Congress showed little activity between its annual sessions that the need tor a Home Rule League had arisen, to be an active propagandist body, to carry on a steady and powerful agitation for Home Rule. The words " Home Rule " were chosen as a short, popular cry, marking the fact that the struggle was not against Great Britain, but for Liberty with- in the Empire. So successful was the cry that by 1917 the words had become, as Mr. Gandhi said, " a mantram in every cottage ". In a Gujerati paper, India was pictured as a woman

92 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

blowing a trumpet, from the mouth of which issued the English words, " Home Rule ". One thing specially aimed at was a common platform on which Hindus and Muslims could ^work together, instead of regularly working apart in a National Congress, to which few ^ Musalmans came, and an All-India Muslim League to which only Muslims were admitted. While this many-featured and powerful educational agitation — a thoroughly healthy and constitutional one, never once disfigured by violence — was going on all over the country, the circumstances of the time were such as to force the Nation rapidly forward into a con- sciousness of Nationhood, and of her then place in the eyes of the world, a place so unworthy of her storied past, and of the virility of her people in the present, when •stirred by a call that moved them to exertion. That call came from the War, which be- came more and more terrible as it swept over

THE GREAT AGITATION 93

the lands, and India became full of pride in the prowess of her soldiers, fighting side by side with the flower of European troops, and fight- ing against the mightiest army in the world* India felt herself living as her children died for Freedom, and the villages which sent their men became conscious of a wider and more stirring world. The ' words of English states- men, spoken to enhearten their own country- men, rang across the seas to India. Asquith spoke of what England would feel if Germans filled her highest offices, controlled her policy, levied her taxes, made her laws ; it would be inconceivable, he cried, and intolerable- India listened, and murmured to herself r " But that is exactly my condition ; here, these same Englishmen think it the only conceivable and the only tolerable life for me." He spoke of the " intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke " ; India whispered : *' Is it so ? Do Englishmen think thus ? What, then, of me ? "

S4 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

She had accepted Engh'sh rule by habit ; now she was shocked into realising the position which she filled in the eyes of the world. A subject Nation. A subject race. Was that really how the white Nations looked on her ? Was that why her sons were treated as coolies in the outside world ? Did a foreign yoke at home mean unspeakable humiliations abroad?

Then the pride of the Aryan Motherland fe awoke. Had she not a civilisation dating back by millennia, beside which these white races, sprung from her womb, were but of yesterday ? Had she not been rich, strong, and self-ruled, while these wandered naked in their forests, and quarrelled with each other ? Had she not lived as equal with the mightiest Nations of a far-off past, when Babylon was the wonder of the world, when the streets of Nineveh were •crowded, when Egypt was the teacher of wisdom, when Persia was a mighty Empire, when Greek philosophy was an offshoot of

THE GREAT AGITATION 95

her schools, when Rome clad her haughtiest matrons in the products of her looms? Had not many a Nation invaded her, and had she not either driven them back, or assimilated them, and re-created them into Indians? Had not the gold of the world flowed into her coffers ? Yet 7tow she was poor. Had not great Empires, now dead, sent ambassadors to her Courts ? But now she ivas " a Dependency " of a little far-off Island in northern seas. She had been asleep. She had been dreaming. But now she awaken- ed. She opened her eyes, and looked around her. She saw her peasants, starving at home, but holding their own as soldiers abroad. The coolies, dcwspised in England's Colonies, were cheered as heroes by Englishmen in the streets of their capital city. Yes, Asquith was right : "the intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke ". If she was worthy to fight for Free- dom, she was worthy to enjoy it. If she stood equal with Englishmen, Scotchmen,

96 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Colonials, in the trenches, and her poured-out

blood mingled with theirs, indistinguishably

soaking into French and Flemish soil, then

she should be equal with them in her own

ancient land. The souls of her dead in France,

in Belgium, in Gallipoli, in Palestine, in Syria,

in Mesopotamia, in East Africa, cried to her to

claim the Freedom for which their bodies lay

scattered far from home and kin. India sprang

to her feet — a Nation.

And then, because a white woman had been

crying in her sleeping ears these truths about

herself for more than twenty years, and was

crying them aloud still in her ears awakened

by the crash of War, she turned to her for a

while as her natural leader, who had blown

the conch for Liberty's battle in India. And

she sang :

Wake Up, India

Hark the tramp of marching numbers, India, waking from her slumbers, Calls us to the fray.

THE GREAT AGITATION 97

Not with weapons slaughter dealing, Not with blood her triumph sealing, But with peace-bells loudly pealing. Dawns her Freedom's Day.

Justice is her buckler stainless, Argument her rapier painless.

Truth her pointed lance. Hark! her song to Heaven ringing, Hatreds all behind her flinging. Peace and joy to all she's bringing.

Love her shining glance.

Mother, Devi ! all-victorious, Thou hast seen a vision glorious.

Dreamt of Liberty. Now the vision has its ending In the truth, all dreams transcending, Hope and fact together blending.

Free ! from sea to sea.

By thy plains and snow-clad mountains, By thy streams and rushing fountains,

By Himalayan heights. By the past of splendid story. By the hopes of future glory. By the strength of wisdom hoary.

Claim thy sacred Rights.

And she claimed them.

CHAPTER IV THE GREAT AGITATION (Continued)

BOMBAY, LUCKNOW, AND THE HOME RULE LEAGUES

When the Congress met at Bombay, 1915, Sir Satyendra Sinha in the chair, it was, so far as the bulk of the delegates were concerned a Home Rule Congress, throbbing with life and new energy. But the older men, the leaders, as said above, did not wish that a separate organisation should be formed, as they thought it would weaken the Congress. We' had a meet- ing of leading adherents of the two parties, and agreed that if the Congress had not started an educative propaganda by August 31st, 1916, a Home Rule League might be started. Many

THE GREAT AGITATION 99

of those who followed my programme were angry with me for yielding so far to the wishes of the older men, especially as Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji had approved the idea. I felt, how- ever, that we could afford to wait eight months for the sake of union, and that it was not for me, a new-comer into the Congress — having attended it for the first time in 1914 — to go against the older men, who had borne the burden and heat of the day. I managed therefore to restrain my more enthusiastic followers, with the result that all agreed to the resolution to form a definite scheme, as suggested the year before.

Resolution XIX, on Self-Government. was intro- duced, says the Anglo-Indian Madras Mail, "amidst scenes of great enthusiasm, the speakers being repeatedly cheered, notablv the Hon. Mr. Suren- dranatb Bannerji, Mrs. Besant, and the Hon Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya **. The Resolution was as follows :

** That this Congress is of opinion that the time has arrived to introduce further and substantial

100 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

measures of reform towards the attainment of Self- Government as defined in Article I of the Constitu- tion, namely reforming and liberalising the system of Government in this country so as to secure to the people an effective control over it by amongst others :

(a) the introduction of Provincial Autonomy including financial independence ;

(b) expansion and reform of the Legislative Councils so as to make them truly and adequately representative of all sections of the people and to give them effective control over the acts of the Executive Government ;

(c) the reconstruction of the various Execu- tive Councils and the establishment of similar Executive Councils in Provinces where they do not exist ;

(d) the reform or the abolition of the Council of the Secretary of State for India ;

(e) establishment of Legislative Councils in Provinces where they do not now exist ;

(/) the readjustment of the relations between the Secretary of State for India and the Government of India ; and ;

(^) a liberal measure of Local Self-Govern- ment.

That this Congress authorises the All-India ) Congress Committee to frame a scheme of reform

/

THE GREAT AGITATION 101

•

and a programme of continuous work, educative and propagandist, having regard to the principles embodied in this Resolution, and further authorises the said Committee to confer with the Committee that may be appointed by the All-India Muslim League for the same purpose, and to take such further measures as may be necessary ; the said Committee to submit its report on cr before the 1st September, 1916, to the General .'Secretaries, Tyhp. shall circulate it to the different,Proyihcial Congress - Committees as early as possible." '. J ;. ; ^^ ;-^^ ;. ;

This Resolution bore its fruit in "the Congress-League Scheme," carried in the Lucknow Congress of 1916 by the united parties in the Congress and by the All-India Muslim League. It gave a good programme for the work of 1916, in addition to the before- named propaganda. The Provincial Congress Committees worked separately, and their work was submitted to the All-India Congress Com- mittee, and was thus thoroughly discussed before the latter met the Council of the Muslim League, and came to an agreement with it on all points, including the burning

102 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

«

question of Muslim representation. The deci- sion on this was accepted later by the British Government, and was incorporated in the Reform Act.

I wrote from Bombay on December 29, 1915, to Ne'm India^ a letter in which the following occurred :

' ' I'6xpect*as this resolution has bepn carried, the Home Rule League will not be sanctioned this evening. The opportunity of joint action on a com- mon platform between Hindus and Muslims will thus be destroyed. I am, of course, bound by my promise not to start the organisation if the Indian leaders disapprove it, deep as will be the disappoint- ment felt all over the country by the rank and file, who have come to the Congress with the object of joining it. They must console themselves with the fact that the strength of the delegates in favour of a constitutional agitation to be begun at once, and carried on through the year, has forced even the timid to agree to a resolution ordering the All-India Congress Committee to form a programme for such educative work. I hope we shall hear no more about "embarrassing the Government," now that the Congress, under the cautious Presidentship of Sir Satyendra P. Sinha, has ordered this propaganda to be carried on. {New Indian December 31, 1915, p. 11.)

THE GREAT AGITATION 103

And again in New India of January 6, 1916 (p. 10): y

As'^regards the suspension of the formation of the H. R. L., the position is really quite clear. I had said from the beginning that it was intended to strengthen, not to weaken, the Congress. I had further said, in a note addressed to every signatory, that I would not organise the League if the Indian leaders were against it. The enthusiasm raised by the brief three months' work brought a huge number of delegates to the Congress ; the resolution which was carried took up the proposed work of the H. R. L. — my resolution on the 27th December was : " To establish a Home Rule League to carry on an educative propaganda throughout the country '* — and adopted, after that meeting, the mandate to the All- India Congress Committee to frame a programme for continuous educational propaganda. I had to choose, on the 29th, between obeying this mandate as a member of the All-India Congress Committee, or starting a new organisation to do exactly the same thing, creating a split for the mere sake of leading a new body when the old one had taken up the work. All the well-known Congress leaders were against the formation of a new body under the changed conditions, and my own judgment agreed with theirs. For I should have had to lead the young men into a propaganda without the protection of the elders which I had sought to gain for them, and I, alone, should have been unable to protect

104 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

them. It would have been madness to do this, when they could do exactly the same work under the aegis of the Congress. The formation was therefore adjourned. If the All-India Congress (Committee does not carry out the mandate of the Congress, and if the Congress organisation goes to sleep, (hen we can go on with our adjourned meet- ing. But we have no right to insult the trusted men elected by t^ e Congress Circles by assuming that they will disobey the Congress. In Madras, we are already beginning, within one week of our return, and I have no doubt that other Circles will do the same.

If we are to win Home Rule, union is absolutely necessary : the Right and Left Wings of the National Party are united by the Congr€ss ; the Congress and the Muslim League have appointed Committees to confer with each other on a scheme of reform, and it rests with us to make Reform and Home Rule identical. Would it have been right, at this critical moment, to play into the hands of the strong party opposed to Indian Self-Government by insisting on a separate movement, a separate label for identical work, yielding to the fissiparous tendency which is the curse of India ? Is it not better for us all to sacrifice personalities to principles, names to facts, and, rejoicing that the National Congress has taken the work we proposed to do as an auxiliary, into its own hand, joyfully and loyally to labour to make its work a success, as it will be if we throw all our enthusiasm and energy into the propaganda it has ordered.

THE GREAT AGITATION 105

The Resolution, with a summary of the most important speeches, was published as " Home Rule Series, No 1 " ; " Published for the Editorial Board of the All-India Self- Government Propaganda Fund, by Annie Besant " was the legend on its title-page. It was the first of 31 tracts, of which the first 16 were published by the Board. The names of the Editorial Board may be put on record : they were:

Bengal: Hirendranath Datta. A. Rasul. J. Choudhuri. BOMBAY: Jamnadas Dwarkadas. Ratansi Morarji. Umar Sobani. MADRAS : Annie Besant. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar. B. P. Wadia. United Provinces: Te] Bahadur Sapru. C. Y. Chintamani. Wazir Hasan. Bihar : Mazar-ul- Haque. Parmeshwar Lall. Moozam Ali Khan.

Members of the Board do not necessarily agree with every page in a pamphlet, but think it, as a whole, useful and worthy of publication.

They were the younger leaders of the then National Party, energetic and determined to work. This was the least aggressive way in

106 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

which the propaganda for Home Rule could

be carried on, while arousing and educating

the country, and was added to the work begun

in 1915 and continued through 1916 and 1917,

so that the volume of propaganda literature

grew ever greater during these years.

The year 1916 opened under good auspices.

I wrote in The Commonweal of January 7,

1916 (p. 21:

The time for piecemeal reforms is over, and the Congress marches steadily forward under the banner of Self-Government. It is absolutely essential that the propaganda proposed for the Home Rule League and adopted by the Congress, shall go forward actively. Mr. C. Y. Chintamani began it nobly with his brilliant lecture on Self-Government in Poona, with Mr. Bal Garigadhar Tilak in the chair — the combination proclaiming the reunion of the Right and Left Wings of the National party — a necessary preliminary to successful action. Mr. Chintamani, we are sure, will do his part in the U. P. We in Madras are planning our campaign, and we should soon hear from Bihar and from Lucknow. Sindh, we know, is eager for work The popular propaganda can be carried on upon the broad lines we are already agreed upon, while we prepare the more detailed plan for Easter.

THE GREAT AGITATION 107

The reunion spoken of was brought about as

related in a letter to New India, which

appeared on December 31, 1915, p. 11 :

A matter of great rejoicing is the closing of the breach between the two wings of the National Party, and the declaration that it is not necessary that a delegate should be a member of a Congress Committee in order that he should be elected— thus forbidding any unfair order such as the one by the Bombay Provincial Congress in order to shut out people they disliked. We shall have a United Congress at Lucknow, the first since the Surat split ; the wound has been healed, and what Madras began, Bombay has completed. Let us now all work together for the common Motherland, and be rivals only in devotion to her.

In that same number, in " India and Great

Britain," I wrote (p. 3) :

Great and epoch-making is the point in the joint history at which India and England have now arrived, and on their attitude to each other and on the decisions that will be come to at the end of the War, hang mighty issues, affecting the welfare and happiness of yet unborn generations in both lands. We may well spend the months which lie before us, ere the War can end, and the terms of peace can be so settled between the belligerents that there is- breathing-time for other problems to be handled, ia

108 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

considering carefully and deeply the many-sided questions which must arise over the re-settlement of the relation of India to Great Britain.

The question of Home Rule for India has now been brought within the sphere of ** practical politics " ; the great demonstration by the Congress, and the plain-spoken declarations of the President of the Muslim League meeting, have brought it to the front ; from all parts of India delegates flocked to acclaim it, and the Congress has been revitalised and placed in the van of the Nation by the enthusiasm aroused by the cry of Home Rule. Never again will it be possible for anyone to declare on the Congress platform that Indian Self-Govern- ment is a far-off vision, for it has descended from the world of ideals into the world of acts.

After pointing out that the preparation of the Congress Scheme must be accompanied by " a programme for educational propaganda during the year," so that the people might be com- petent to discuss the details put before them in the Scheme, I urged that each Congress Circle should prepare leaflets and pamphlets to aid this propaganda. Further, I pleaded that Home Rule would remove the causes of

THE GREAT AGITATION 109

India's poverty by " altering the system which

breeds the poverty " (p. 3) :

If India is, as is so often pointed out, the most poverty-stricken country in the world, there must be a cause for this. If the most poverty-stricken country in the world is also the most costly Govern- ment in the world, there is obviously a need for retrenchment. If Indian interests are subordinated to the interests not only of Lancashire, but until lately of Germany, and now of Japan, it is clear that we need a system of administration which will put India's interests first. Hence, if India is ta live, her own children must take up the duties of Government, and administer their own affairs. The time has come of which Macaulay prophesied, when India shall be Free and Self-Governing.

Returning to the same subject the following week I showed why " For Great Britain's sake India should have Home Rule." [Ibid., January 14, p. 23.) How much stronger would England have been, had she taken the advice of the country given thirty years before by introduc- ing a system of Indian volunteers. If she had had Home Rule, then

when the war broke out, India would have ready, and would have sprung to arms, with all the pride

110 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

of a race conscious of its freedom, to defend the Empire in which she was a partner, to make Egypt and the Suez Canal as safe as the centre of England. The War would have been over in a few weeks, if indeed it had ever begun, with the millions of a free and armed India standing forward to protect the Empire.

For when Home Rule has obliterated the sad memories of the past, and when Indians in England and Englishmen in India meet as equals, as citizens, as welcome residents in each other's countries, in the mutual respect and trust that can only grow out of equal freedom, then indeed shall they be sharers in an Empire, peaceful, free, and prosperous. Then shall they be knit together by ties of love that nothing can rend asunder. Then shall East and West understand each other, hand clasped in hand, clear eyes shining on each other in mutual friend- ship, mutual helpfulness. Then shall the designs of Providence in bringing them together be no longer inscrutable, for they shall form an Empire that none shall dare to threaten, an Empire that shall be the home of Liberty, the Guardian of weak Nations, the terror of the would-be oppressor, the glorious home of Science, of Literature, of Art, an Empire which shall unite East and West, in which, ** Righteousness and Peace shall have kissed each other ''. {Ibid., January 14, p. 23.)

If the year 1916 marked the beginning of a new phase in the struggle for Liberty, it

THE GREAT AGITATION HI

also saw the beginning of a new form of resist- ance to it. The growing strength of the Home /Rule movement during the autumn of 1915 alarmed the Government of Madras, which possessed, perhaps, the most reactionary of the Civilian class in its Executive Council and bureaucratic Government, and Lord Pentland, the then Governor, was pliant in their hands — a well-meaning but weak man. They determined on repression, and the Press Act, the Act which placed every news- paper at the mercy of the Local Government was invoked. On May 26, 1916, notice was served on New India^ and a security levied pf Rs. 2,000, paid on June 5. It was the first step of the Pentland Government on the path that led quickly to the Reform Act of 1919. Incidentally, the first Court of the Hindu University, of which I was a member, took place on August 12 of the same year. Naturally, the levy of security could make no difference

U2 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

in the well-considered policy of New India, and the security was forfeited on August 28, and a new security of Rs. 10,000 levied. The Act stated that the security might be given in Government Promissory Notes, or in cash ; the Government refused the Notes and insisted on the cash. When the Press Bill was before the Council, the Law Officer, Mr. Sinha, had promised that interest should always be paid on the money taken as security, saying that it was always invested, and therefore interest accrued. The Madras Government, however, did not feel itself bound by the pledge of the Government of India ; it refused the Govern- ment paper, insisted on cash, and some of its agents put the interest into the Government treasury, thus levying on New India a continu- ing fine of Rs. 350 a year, reckoning interest at the low figure of 3J per cent. Such were the pleasant little ways of the Madras Government at that time.

THE GREAT AGITATION 113

Being a fighter against oppression, I continued to edit New India on the same lines, and began an action against the Gov- ernment for the recovery of the forfeited security.

I knew it was a hopeless task from the beginning, as the Press Act was so worded that no one penalised by the Executive under it could possibly escape, as had been pointed out by Sir Lawrence Jenkins, the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. But in fighting bad law, every opportunity must be seized, so beginning with a Special Bench in the Madras Court (September 27, 1916} I fought on to the Privy Council. Mr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar made a fine effort on a technical legal point, but could not carry it. The Acting Chief Justice acquitted me of all sedition and admitted my perfect loyalty to the Crown, but, like his peer in the Calcutta Court, he thought some of the articles came within the Act.

8

114 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

This all made good propaganda, and educat- ed the people to understand the benefits of bureaucratic rule. The advantage of going on to the Privy Council was that it tied up the bureaucratic hands, while New India though under heavy security and liable to have the press forfeited after a second forfeiture of the ; security, could go on upon its unrepentant way until the first security case was finally decided. Two Home Rule Leagues were formed during the year 1916. Mr. Tilak formed one and I the other, on the ground that some people loved him and hated me, and others hated him and loved me ; hence woipking-together-sepa- rately was the best policy./ We of the Congress of 1915 formed our All-India Home Rule League in September 1, 1916, according to the agreement reached m Bombay at Christmas, 1915. It worked splendidly and successfully through the remaining months of 1916, through 1917 and 1918.

THE GREAT AGITATION 115

A " Home Rule (English Auxiliary) League " was formed in England during 1916, and in fact, it preceded ours. It worked most actively in Britain, representing the wish of India for Freedom within the Empire, printed and circulated large numbers of pamphlets, and created in England so lively an interest in India that the Government there looked on it suspiciously, without the smallest reason, unless it were that after the Government had persuaded the publishers in England of a little sixpenny book of mine, called India — A Nation^ to withdraw it from circulation, the English Auxiliary printed a pretty half-crown edition of it, and sent it to every member of Parliament. Muriel, Countess De La Warr, Miss Barbara Villiers, Mr. George Lansbury — before the days of " direct action " — and Mr. John Scurr, were the most prominent members of it.

At the Congress of 1916, at Lucknow, we had a splendid gathering. At many meetings

116 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

through the year we had hammered out our Scheme, as said above, and it was passed both by the Congress and the Muslim League.

Misfortunes make strange bed-fellows, and the Madras Government, casting about for a new weapon against the irrepressible Home Rulers — who continued their constitutional struggle for Reforms and had now a Con- gress-League Scheme which they were bent on popularising — formed by some of its mem- bers an alliance with Dr. Nair, a powerful writer with a savage pen, and, regarding the Home Rule movement as chiefly among Brahmanas, pre-eminently the intelligentsia of the country and predominant among Con- gress leaders, it was resolved to stir up the Non-Brahmanas — who included most of the great landlords and the wealthy mer- chant class, as well as a majority of the industrial workers — against the Brahmanas. The landlords and rich merchants were even

THE GREAT AGITATION 117

more rigid — being more rarely English-edu- cated— in their exclusion of lower caste Hindus and outcastes than the Brahmanas. In fact, the leaders in the uplift of the submerged classes were mostly Brahmanas, and especially on the West Coast, where outcastes were treated worse than elsewhere, the Brahmanas led the crusade in which — touched by the spirit of Liberty — the outcastes began to establish their right to use all public roads like other citizens; in fact a great memorial against such use was sent up by " high-class non-Brahmanas " to Lord Pentland, when the outcastes, led by a Brahmana, walked in procession through a road which the petitioners tried to keep shut against them. When we returned from the Lucknow Con- gress of 1916, we found the results of the / non-Brahmana movement already marked. I It had declared itself against Home Rule, \ supported the British autocracy, and began a

118 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

furious attack on all who desired to win political freedom within the British Empire.

In Ne-w India, January 22, 1917, p. 5, a report is given of a meeting of the newly formed South Indian People's Association. The movement was then, said Rao Bahadur P. Theagaraya Chetty, only a month old, but they had already Rs. 36,000, and were sure of getting the lakh they wanted to start a paper in a short time. It was a wealthy party. Mr. Kandasawmi Chetty said :

Government by the people meant that they should have a body of intelligent people. Were they in a position to have Government by the people ? Would they prefer to be governed by a typical Englishman, or a typical Brahmana ? The Englishman was a selfish creature. He was a mercantile being, but he had also ideals of freedom, justice and fairplay. So he would rather throw himself on the mercy of the liberty-loving English- man, than of an oligarchy which played upon the people and their weakness. Their Home Rule meant Anti-Foreign Rule. He could not bring him- self to think that an Englishman was a common enemy. He might be an enemy of the Brahmanas,

THE GREAT AGITATION ' 119

but certainly he was not an enemy of the Non- Brahmanas. Non-Brahmanas did not look upon the Government or Englishmen as enemies.

Thus began the Hymn of Hate against a small but brilliantly intellectual and cultured class ; it became a vendetta, a crusade by rank, wealth, and numbers against a class for the most part poor, but highly educated; for the Brahmanas, traditionally learned, had grasped at English education, and had thereby risen to posts in which high intellectual ability and knowledge of English were required, while the bulk of the poor of that caste crowded the Government subordinate offices, on miserable salaries as clerks, translators, etc.

The speech was typical not only in its hate but in its misrepresentation. It will be seen from the preceding extracts that the Reformers did not hate the English, though they fought the Bureaucracy that denied liberty to the Nation. Constantly they put forward the

120 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

English ideals of Liberty, and urged a reform of the system of Government for England's sake as well as for India's. The whole Home Rule movement was designed to benefit both countries, and one of the objects of the All- India Home Rule League was to strengthen the British connection and to win the status of a Free Nation as part of a Commonwealth of Free Nations under the British Crown. Home Rulers recognised that Home Rule was a condition of preserving the British connection. The alliance between members of the Madras Government and the non-Brahmana, or rather anti-Brahmana, crusade was shown by the pre- sence of Sir Alexander Cardew at a meeting held in Madras on November 24, 1917, when Dr. Nair, Rao Bahadur P. Theagaraya Chetty, K. Venkata Reddi Naidu and R. Venkataratnam Naidu, with the Director of Public Instruc- tion were present, to welcome the non-Brah- mana graduates of the year, and Dr. Nair

THE GREAT AGITATION 121

emphasised the interest taken by Sir Alexander in Dravidian graduates. Sir Alexander ex- pressed the hope that there would be many, more, and New India wrote :

The presence of Sir Alexander Cardew at the above gathering requires notice. He must have known that the Association which he patronised was a separatist one ; it is in fact the parent of the body now working mischief as the Liberal Federa- tion. That Sir Alexander Cardew should have so prominently associated himself with that body, and that too in a distinctly sectarian function, is a matter to be considered by the general public. Supporters are being canvassed for such new movements on the plea that its members can ex- pect at any time to bask in official sunshine ; and the task of such canvassers is very considerably facilitated by the open way in which high officials of the Government associate with them. The next step will probably be a public appeal by similarly placed gentlemen to join the new move- ment, or to supply funds to it. Incidents of this type indicate to what undignified lengths persons are now prepared to go in thwarting our National aspirations. \Loc. cit., November 26, 1917.

Thus fostered, the movement spread rapid- ly, and proved to be a veritable sower of the

122 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

dragon-seeds of hatred against the small class of Brahmai?as among the people of the Presidency ; later, it was naturally followed by bitter attacks from the outcastes against all who were caste-men.

The early months of 1917 — so far as we were concerned — were passed in active pro- paganda, popularising the Congress-League Scheme. On the other hand. Lord Pentland took occasion to say that in the Legislative Council :

All thoughts of the early grant of Responsible Self-Government should be put entirely out of mind. (New India, May 25. 1917, p. 4).

That was impossible, and we went on with our work. Then came a blow which was intended to put a sudden end to the work of the paper, then regarded as the chief advocate of Home Rule ; A^ew India — as it would not stop for securities — should be stopped by the internment of its Editor,

THE GREAT AGITATION 123

its Assistant Editor, and its liveliest and most pungent contributor — Annie Besant, B. P. Wadia and G. S. Arundale. An order of internment was issued with a few days grace; that executed, the press could be sequestered and all would be well. It was served on June 16, the day after the anniver- sary of the signing of Magna Carta in 1215. No reason was assigned, and we never learnt what was our exact offence. Lord Pentland called me to see him, but refused any informa- tion. I suspended New India on June 18th, in order to save the security and the press, sold the Vasanta Press to Rai Sahab G. Soobbiah Chetty, and recovered its Rs. 5,000 security on June 19; on June 20, I sold The Commonweal Press to Mr. Ranga Reddi, and the New India Press to Mr. P. K. Telang, recovering Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 10,000, and issued a notice to New India subscribers ; the paper appeared again on the 21st ; it was quick work,

124 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

but the time was short, and I had to " hustle ". So we had three bran new press-owners, under securities of only Rs. 2,000 each, instead of Rs. 17,000. I do not think that the Press Act was intended to have a motor-car, driven by a lady of nearly seventy, rushed through it in this way, like the proverbial "coach and horses ". But then it was drawn up by bureaucrats who had had no experience of Home Rulers ; they were accustomed to revolu- tionaries and even passive resisters, but had never met with constitutional fighters for Liberty, who regarded them with amused unconcern, and perfect good temper. Before we left, Mr. Horniman and Mr. Kelkar kindly came over from Bombay and Poona to offer help, and each wrote an article for New India of the 21st ; as they were already editors, we thought it was better that Mr. P. K. Telang should assume charge of New India^ and he promptly filled the gap. He forfeited the

THE GREAT AGITATION 125

security in due course, and another Rs. 10,000 was levied. When I resumed the editor- ship, Mr. Telang presented the press to Mr. Ranga Reddi, who started again with another Rs. 2,000. The magistrate however most improperly kept the Rs. 10,000 on various excuses for over a year, but when another magistrate took his place, the money was at once refunded. The long fight made good propaganda, and helped Home Rule immensely. For when we, the interned, foregathered at Ootacamund, a whirlwind broke out, raged up and down the country, stormed over to Britain, Russia, France, America, at several hundred miles an hour. Questions were asked in the House of Commons and in the Viceroy's Legislative Council. Members of Parliament, like the babes in the wood, were snowed over with leaves — of paper. "Who would have thought," said a very high official pensively, "that there would

126 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

have been such a fuss about one old woman ? " Crowds of people and many popular leaders joined the Home Rule League. Meet- ings were held, resolutions flew about ; C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Congressmen everywhere, fanned the storm and rode it. They preserved perfect order ; never a window was broken ; never a riot occurred ; never a policeman was assaulted ; never man, woman or child went to gaol. For three months the vehement agitation continued un- brokenly, without ever breaking a law, and the students who wanted to strike were kept in their schools and colleges, and then — came the declaration of August 20, 1917, that the goal of Great Britain in India was Res- ponsible Government, and an announcement that the Secretary of State for India was coming thither, to learn the wishes of the people. To " obtain a calm atmosphere " the three internees were to be liberated.

THE GREAT AGITATION 127

It was a truly constitutional triumph, won by a United India, and was crowned by the election of the Home Rule President as Pre- sident of the National Congress of 1917.

Mr. Montagu, the Secretary of State, came

to India, and travelled with the Viceroy,

Lord Chelmsford, all over India, meeting

Deputations representing every type of politi-

cal opinion. The National Congress and the

Muslim League, and the two Home Rule

Leagues presented at Delhi on November 26,

1917, memorials asking for Home Rule. The

National Congress and the League were

represented by a Joint Deputation from

their respective Executives, and the memorial

was read by Mr. Surendranath Bannerji. After

a careful and argumentative presentation of the

Indian case, it wound up :

We submit that the reforms for which the National Congress and the Muslim League plead, are needed as much in the interests of the good government of the country and the happiness and

128 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

prosperity of the people as for the legitimate satis- faction of our National self-respect and for a due recognition of India's place among the free and civilised Nations of the Empire and the outside world. Nor are they less necessary to strengthen and solidify the British connection with this ancient land. India has given freely of her love and service to England, and she aspires to attain to her proper place of equality and honour in the Commonwealth of Nations, which are proud to own fidelity to his Imperial Majesty the King-Emperor. If, as has been said, the British Empire is the greatest secular power on earth making for the good of mankind^ India is hopeful and confident that she will not be denied what is in every way due to her, especially after this great War of Liberty, in which it has been authoritatively recognised that she has played a distinguished and honourable part.

The two Home Rule Leagues were repre- sented by Mr. Tilak and myself respectively and we also read our memorials. At Madras, the All-India Home Rule League presented Mr. Montagu with a million verified signa- tures, gathered in the Presidency, and conveyed to him in three or four carts.

It was the end of a strenuous struggle of three crowded years ; to me the end of another

THE GREAT AGITATION 129

sta^e in twenty-four years of steady labour ; to the Congress the end of one stage in its thirty- three years of political efforts for liberty.

Thenceforth Liberty's battle entered on another phase.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA

Writing at the end of 1917, I sketched out what seemed to me to be the Causes of what I called " the New Spirit in India ". It was part of my speech as President of the National Congress, the post which, since 1885, had been regarded as the highest place within the Nation's gift, the proof of her fullest confidence and love. Reading that sketch to-day, in 1922, I do not feel that I can better it^ so I-ttse^T^ here, and it has the advantage of marking the place held at the end of 1917 by the National Movement in India, as seen by one who was among the leaders in that struggle which had ended in triumph. \_Here begins the reprint\.

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 131

Apart from the natural exchange of thought between East and West, the influence of English education, literature and ideals, the effect of travel in Europe, Japan and the United States of America, and other recognised causes for the changed outlook in India, there have been special forces at work during the last few years to arouse a New Spirit in India, and to alter her attitude of mind. These may be summed up as :

[a] The Awakening of Asia.

[b] Discussions abroad on Alien Rule and

Imperial Reconstruction. {c) Loss of Belief in the Superiority of the White Races.

[d) The Awakening of the Merchants.

[e] The Awakening of the Women to

claim their Ancient Position. (/) The Awakening of the Masses. Each of these causes has had its share in the splendid change of attitude in the Indian

132 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Nation, in the uprising of a spirit of pride of country, of independence, of self-reliance, of dignity, of self-respect. The War has quick- ened the rate of evolution of the world, and no country has experienced the quickening more than our Motherland.

[a] The Awakening of Asia

In a conversation I had with Lord Minto, soon after his arrival as Viceroy, he discussed the so-called "unrest in India," and recognised it as the inevitable result of English Educa- tion, of English Ideals of Democracy, of the Japanese victory over Russia, and of the changing conditions in the outer world. I was therefore not surprised to read his remark that he recognised, " frankly and publicly, that new aspirations were stirring in the hearts of the people, that they were part of a larger movement common to the whole East, and that it was necessary to satisfy them to a

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 133

reasonable extent by giving them a larger share in the administration".

But the present movement in India will be very poorly understood, if it be regarded only in connection with the movement in the East. The awakening of Asia is part of a world- movement, which has been quickened into marvellous rapidity by the World War. The world-movement is towards Democracy, and for the West dates from the breaking away of the American Colonies from Great Britain, consummated in 1776, and its sequel in the French Revolution of 1789. Needless to say that its root was in the growth of modern science undermining the fabric of intellectual servitude, in the work of the Encyclopaedists, and in that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Thomas Paine. In the East, the swift changes in Japan, the success of the Japanese Empire against Russia, the downfall of the Manchu dynasty in China and the establishment of a

134 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Chinese Republic, the efforts at improvement in Persia, hindered by the interference of Russia and Great Britain with her growing ambition, and the creation of British and Russian " spheres of influence," depriving her of her just liberty, and now the Russian Revolution and the probable rise of a Russian Republic in Europe and Asia, have all entirely changed the conditions before existing in India. Across Asia, beyond the Himalayas, stretch free and self-ruling Nations. India no longer sees as her Asian neighbours the huge domains of a Tsar and a Chinese despot, and compares her condition under British rule with those of their subject populations. British rule profited by the comparison, at least until 1905, when the great period of repression set in. But in future, unless India wins Self- Government, she will look enviously at her Self-Governing neighbours, and the contrast will intensify her unrest.

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 135

But even if she gains Home Rule, as I believe she will, her position in the Empire will imperatively demand that she shall be strong as well as free. She becomes not only a vulnerable point in the Empire, as the Asian Nations evolve their own ambitions and rival- ries, but also a possession to be battled for. Mr. Laing once said : " India is the milch-cow of England," a Kamadhenu, in fact, a " cow of plenty " ; and if that view should arise in Asia, the ownership of the milch-cow would become a matter of dispute, as of old between Vashish- tha and Vishvamitra. Hence India must be capable of self-defence both by land and sea. There may be a struggle for the primacy of Asia, for supremacy in the Pacific, for the mastery of Australasia, to say nothing of the inevitable trade-struggles, in which Japan is already endangering Indian industry and Indian trade, while India is unable to protect herself.

136 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

In order to face these larger issues with equanimity, the Empire requires a contented, strong, self-dependent and armed India, able to hold her own and to aid the Dominions, especially Australia, with her small population and immense unoccupied and undefended area. India alone has the man-power which can effectively maintain the Empire in Asia, and it is a short-sighted, a criminally short-sighted, policy not to build up her strength as a Self- Governing State within the Commonwealth of Free Nations under the British Crown. The Englishmen in India talk loudly of their interests ; what can this mere handful do to protect their interests against attack in the coming years ? Only in a free and powerful India will they be safe. Those who read Japanese papers know how strongly, even during the War, they parade unchecked their pro-German sympathies, and how likely after the War is an alliance between these two

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 137

ambitious and warlike Nations. Japan will come out of the War with her army and navy unweakened, and her trade immensely strength- ened. Every consideration of sane statesman- ship should lead Great Britain to trust India more than Japan, so that the British Empire in Asia may rest on the sure foundation of Indian loyalty, the loyalty of a free and contented people, rather than be dependent on the con- tinued friendship of a possible future rival. For international friendships are governed by National interests, and are built on quicksands, not on rock.

Englishmen in India must give up the idea that English dominance is necessary for the protection of their interests, amount- ing, in 1915, to £365,399,000 sterling. They do not claim to dominate the United States of America, because they have invested there £688,078,000. They do not claim to dominate the Argentine Republic, because

138 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

they have invested there £269,808,000. Why then should they claim to dominate India on the ground of their investments ? Britons must give up . the idea that India is a possession to be exploited for their own benefit, and must see her as a friend, an equal, a Self- Governing Dominion within the Empire, a Nation like themselves, a willing partner in the Empire, but not a dependent. The democratic move- ment in Japan, China and Russia in Asia has sympathetically affected India, and it is idle to pretend that it will cease to affect her.

(^J Discussions Abroad on Alien Rule and Reconstruction

But there are other causes which have been working in India, consequent on the British attitude against autocracy and in defence of freedom in Europe, while her attitude to India has, until lately, been left in doubt. Therefore

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 139

I spoke of a splendid opportunity lost. India at first believed whole-heartedly that Great Britain was fighting for the freedom of all Nationalities. Even now, Mr. Asquith declared — in his speech in the House of Commons reported here last October, on the peace resolution of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald — that "the Allies are fighting for nothing but freedom," and, an important addition — '*for nothing short of freedom ". In his speech declaring that Britain would stand by France in her claim for the restoration of Alsace- Lorraine, he spoke of " the intolerable degrada- tion of a foreign yoke ". Is such a yoke less intolerable, less wounding to self-respect, here than in Alsace-Lorraine, where the rulers and the ruled are both of European blood, similar in religion and habits? As the War went on, India slowly and unwillingly came to realise that the hatred of autocracy was confined to autocracy in the West, and that the degradation

140 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

was only regarded as intolerable for men of white races; that freedom was lavishly promised to all except to India; that new powers were to be given to the Dominions, but not to India. India was markedly left out of the speeches of statesmen dealing with the future of the Empire, and at last there was plain talk of the White Empire, the Empire of the Five Nations, and the " coloured races " were lumped together as the wards of the White Empire, doomed to an indefinite minority.

The peril was pressing ; the menace unmis- takable. The Reconstruction of the Empire was on the anvil; what was to be India's place therein ? The Dominions were proclaim- ed as partners; was India to remain a Dependency? Mr. Bonar Law bade the Dominions strike while the iron was hot ; was India to wait till it was cold ? India saw her soldiers fighting for freedom in Flanders,

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 141

in France, in Gallipoli, in Asia Minor, in China, in Africa ; was she to have no share of the freedom for which she fought ? At last she sprang to her feet and cried, in the words of one of her noblest sons : " Freedom is my birthright ; and I want it." The words " Home Rule" became her Mantram. She claimed her place in the Empire.

Thus, while she continued to support, and even to increase, her army abroad, fighting for the Empire, and poured out her treasures as water for Hospital Ships, War Funds, Red Cross Organisations, and the gigantic War Loan, a dawning fear oppressed her, lest, if she did not take order with her own household, success in the War for the Empire might mean decreased liberty for herself.

The recognition of the right of the Indian Government to make its voice heard in Im- perial matters, when they were under dis- cussion in an Imperial Conference, was a step

142 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

in the right direction. But disappointment was felt that while other countries were repre- sented by responsible Ministers, the representa- tion in India's case was of the Government, of a Government irresponsible to her, and not the representative of herself. No fault was found with the choice itself, but only with the non- representative character of the chosen, for they were selected by the Government, and not by the elected members of the Supreme Council. This defect in the resolution moved by the Hon. Khan Bahadur M. M. Shafi on October 2, 1915, was pointed out by the Hon. Mr. Surendranath Bannerji. He said :

My Lord, in view of a situation so full of hope and promise, it seems to me that my friend's Re- solution does not go far enough. He pleads for official representation at the Imperial Conterence: he does not plead for Popular representation. He urges that an address be presented to His Majesty's •Government, through the Secretary of State for India, for official representation at the Imperial Council. My Lord, official representation may mean Httle or nothing. It may indeed be attended with

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 143

some risk ; for I am sorry to have to say — but say it I must — that our officials do not always see eye to eye with us as regards many great public questions which affect this country ; and indeed their views, judged from our standpoint, may sometimes seem adverse to our interests. At the same time, my Lord, I recognise the fact that the Imperial Con- ference is an assemblage of officials pure and simple, consisting of Ministers of the United Kingdom and of the Self-Governing Colonies. But, my Lord, there is an essential difference between them and our- selves. In their case, the Ministers are the elect of the people, their organ and their voice, answerable to them for their conduct and their proceedings. In our case, our officials are public servants in name, but in reality they are the masters of the public. The situation may improve, and I trust it will, under the liberalising influence of your Excellency's beneficent administration ; but we must take things as they are, and not indulge in building castles in the air which may vanish " like the baseless fabric of a vision ".

It was said to be an epoch-making event ihat *' Indian Representatives " took part in the Conference. Representatives they were, but, as said, of the British Government in India, not of India, whereas their colleagues represented their Nations. They did good

144 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

work, none the less, for they were able and experienced men, though they failed us in the Imperial Preference Conference, and, partially, on the Indentured Labour question. Yet we hope that the presence in the Conference of men of Indian birth may prove to be the proverbial " thin end of the wedge," and may have convinced their colleagues that, while India was still a Dependency, India's sons were fully their equals.

The Report of the Public Services Commis- sion, though now too obviously obsolete to be discussed, caused both disappointment and resentment ; for it showed that, in the eyes of the majority .of the Commissioners, English domination in Indian administration was to be perpetual, and that 30 years hence she would only hold a pitiful 25 per cent of the higher appointments in the I.C.S. and the Police. I cannot, however, mention that Commission,

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 145

even in passing, without voicing India's thanks to the Hon. Mr. Justice Rahim, for his rare courage in writing a solitary Minute of Dissent, in which he totally rejected the Report, and laid down the right principles which should govern recruitment for the Indian Civil Services.

India had but three representatives on the Commission ; G. K. Gokhale died ere it made its Report, his end quickened by his sufferings during its work, by the humiliation of the way in which his countrymen were treated. Of Mr. Abdur Rahim I have already spoken. The Hon. Mr. M. B. Chaubal signed the Report, but dissented from some of its most important recommendations. The whole Report was written " before the flood," and it is now merely an antiquarian curiosity.

India, for all these reasons, was forced to see before her a future of perpetual subordination :

10

146 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the Briton rules in Great Britain, the Frenchman in France, the American in America, each Dominion in its own area, but the Indian was to rule nowhere ; alone among the peoples of the world, he was not to feel his own country as his own. " Britain for the British " was right and natural ; '' India tor the Indians " was wrong, even seditious. It must be " India for the Empire," or not even for the Empire, but " for the rest of the Empire," careless of herself. " British support for British Trade " was patriotic and proper in Britain. " Svadeshi goods for Indians " showed a petty and anti-Imperial spirit in India. The Indian was to continue to live perpetually, and even thankfully, as Gopal Kfshna Gokhale said he lived now, in " an atmosphere of inferiority," and to be proud to be a citizen (without rights) of the Empire, while its other component Nations were to be citizens (with rights) in their own countries

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 147

first, and citizens of the Empire secondarily. Just as her trust in Great Britain was strained nearly to breaking point came the glad news of Mr. Montagu's appointment as Secretary of State for India, of the Viceroy's invitation to him, and of his coming to hear for himself what India wanted. It was a ray of sunshine breaking through the gloom, confidence in Great Britain revived, and glad preparation was made to welcome the coming of a friend.

The attitude of India has changed to meet the changed attitude of the Governments of India and Great Britain. But let none imagine that that consequential change of attitude con- notes any change in her determination to win Home Rule. She is ready to consider terms of peace, but it must be " peace with honour," and honour in this connection means Freedom^ If this be not granted, an even more vigorous agitation will begin.

148 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

[c] Loss of Belief in the Superiority of the White Races

The undermining of this belief dates from the spreading of the Arya Samaj and the Theosophical Society. Both bodies sought to lead the Indian people to a sense of the value of their own civilisation, to pride in their past, creating self-respect in the present, and self- confidence in the future. They destroyed the unhealthy inclination to imitate the West in all things, and taught discrimination, the using only of what was valuable in western thought and culture, instead of a mere slavish copying of everything. Another great force was that of Swami Vivekananda, alike in his passionate love and admiration for India, and his exposure of the evils resulting from Materialism in the West. Take the following :

Children of India, I am here to speak to you to- day about some practical things, and my object in

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 149

reminding you about the glories of the past is simply this. Many times have I been told that looking into the past only degenerates and leads to nothing, and that we should look to the future. That is true. But out of the past is built the future. Look back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal fountains that are behind, and after that, look forward, march forward, and make India brighter, greater, much higher than she ever was. Our ancestors were great. We must recall that. We must learn the elements of our being, the blood that courses in our veins ; we must have faith in that blood, and what it did in the past : and out of that faith, and consciousness of past greatness, we must build an India yet greater than what she has been.

And again :

I know for certain that millions, I say de- liberately, millions, in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will save them from the hideous abyss of materialism, into which modern money-worship is driving them headlong, and many of the leaders of the new Social Movements have already discovered that Vedanta in its highest form can alone spiritualise their social aspirations.

The process was continued by the admiration of Sarhskft literature expressed by European scholars and philosophers. But the effect of

150 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

these was confined to the few and did not reach the many. The first great shock to their belief in white superiority came from the triumph of Japan over Russia, the facing of a huge European Power by a comparatively small eastern Nation, the exposure of the weakness and rottenness of the Russian leaders, and the contrast with their hardy virile opponents, ready to sacrifice every- thing for their country.

The second great shock has come from the frank brutality of German theories of the State, and their practical carrying out in the treatment of conquered districts, and the laying waste of evacuated areas in retreat. The teachings of Bismarck and their practical application in France, Flanders, Belgium, Poland and Serbia have destroyed all the glamour of the superiority of Christendom over Asia. Its vaunted civilisation is seen to be but a thin veneer, and its religion a matter

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 151

of form rather than of life. Gazing from afar at the ghastly heaps of the dead and the hosts of the mutilated, at science turned into devilry, and ever inventing new tortures for rending and slaying, Asia may be forgiven for think- ing that, on the whole, she prefers her own religions and her own civilisations.

But even deeper than the outer tumult of War has pierced the doubt as to the reality of the Ideals of Liberty and Nationality so loudly proclaimed by the foremost western Nations, the doubt of the honesty of their champions. Sir James Meston said truly, a short time ago, that he had never, in his long experience, known Indians in so distrustful and suspicious a mood as that which he met in them to-day. And that is so. For long years Indians have been chafing over the many breaches of pro- mises and pledges to them that remain unredeemed. The maintenance here of a system of political repression, of coercive

152 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

measures increased in number and more harshly applied since 1905, the carrying of the system to a wider extent since the War for the sanctity of treaties and for the protec- tion of Nationalities has been going on, have deepened the mistrust. A frank and courag- eous statesmanship applied to the honest carry- ing out of large reforms too long delayed, can alone remove it. The time for political tinkering is past; the time for wise and definite changes is here.

To these deep causes must be added the comparison between the progressive policy of some of the Indian States in matters which most affect the happiness of the people, and the slow advance made under British adminis- tration. The Indian notes that this advance is made under the guidance of rulers and ministers of his own race. When he sees that the suggestions made in the People's Assembly in Mysore are fully considered and,

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 153

when possible, given effect to, he realises that without the forms of power, the members exercise more real power than those in our Legislative Councils. He sees education spreading, new industries fostered, villagers encouraged to manage their own affairs and take the burden of their own responsibility, and he wonders why Indian incapacity is so much more efficient than British capacity.

Perhaps, after all, for Indians, Indian rule may be the best.

[d] The Awakening of the Merchafits

Of the many forces that have created New India, the awakening of the Merchants into political life is perhaps the most potent, and the most pregnant with happy possibilities. Sir Dorab Tata, in the Industrial Conference in Bombay, 1915, advocated the yoking toge- ther of Politics and Industry. It is now coming

154 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

about. Hitherto the merchants had remained immersed in their own occupations, but they were awakened by the War to the necessity of taking part in politics by finding that those very occupations were threatened with dis- aster by the attitude of the Government ; as for instance, the refusal to lend a helping hand to industries which had been connected closely with German trade and were menaced with ruin by the War ; by the refusal to aid the efforts made to replace necessaries — hitherto supplied by Germany — by the founding or financing of factories for their production at home ; by the restrictions put on trade under pre- text of the War, that prevented the legitimate expansion of promising branches of industry ; by the absence of effort to relieve the stringency of the money market, wealthy merchants being unable to obtain cash to meet their liabilities here, because their English debtors could not transmit the money they owed ; some were

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 155

even obliged to sell the depreciated Govern- ment paper at heavy loss in order to maintain their credit ; in other cases War Bonds were offered to them in lieu of cash for goods sup- plied. The details have varied in different centres, and the wealthy and independent merchants of Bombay have suffered less than the merchants of Madras, with whose difficult- ies I am naturally more familiar.

There, added difficulties constantly arise from the favouritism shown by the Presidency Bank to English, as compared with Indian, clients, and the absence of Indians from its Directorate, complained of for years. The anxiety felt by the merchants was largely in- creased by the depreciation of Government paper, and apart from the heavy losses of capital incurred when necessity forced holders to sell for cash, an uneasy feeling arose as to the stability of the Government, when its securities fell so low.

156 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Another disturbing cause was the alienation during many years of lands and minerals to foreigners, the Government looking on with indifference.

The copra and coir industry of the West Coast had passed into German hands ; struck away from them by the War, there was danger of its being absorbed by the English ; happily the firm of Tata and Sons stepped in and res- cued it, and it remains an Indian industry. Ten years ago, the working of the blend known as monazite, an ingredient in munitions, was absorbed by Germany. Indian mica mines became German property. Undressed hides were exported wholesale to Germany, although Mysore had shewn that they could be dressed and tanned better in Indian than in European factories, and only a little encouragement and help were needed to ensure their dressing and tanning, if not also their working, here. Instead of that, the undressed hides were

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 157

bought up by Government at a price fixed by themselves, and were largely exported to be dressed, tanned and worked abroad. The Viceroy, speaking in the Supreme Council on September 5th last, stated that large orders had been given to " tanners in India," and that experimental work in tanning had yielded results which promised success on a com« mercial scale; he expressed the hope that, after the War, the tanning industry would undergo a great expansion for general pur- poses. But hide merchants are distressed by an order that hides are to be purchased at War prices, the British War Office buying them to provide with leather goods the civilian population in Britain. But what has the War Office to do wuth providing boots for civilians, and why should India be drained for civil as well as for military purposes ? If the tanning experiments are being carried on with India's money by experts paid by India, and not by

158 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

British capitalists, then the outcome should be the property of India and enrich the people of the country, not British merchants and manu- facturers settled here.

The War has turned the attention of Govern- ment to the wisdom of utilising India's immense natural resources, and the Viceroy speaks of organising these resources with " a view to making India more self-contained, and less dependent on the outer world for the supplies of manufactured goods ". We heartily endorse this view. This has long been the cry from Indians, for India, with her varieties of soil and climate, can produce all the materials she needs, and with her surplus goods she can — as Phillimore said of her in the seventeenth century — " with the droppings of her soil feed distant Nations ". But the East India Com- pany first, the British Government next, and lately exploiting bodies of Imperialist Traders, have vehemently insisted that India should

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 159

supply raw materials, export them for manu- facture abroad, and purchase, preferably within the Empire, the goods manufactured out of them. As Macaulay pointed out, the marvellous expansion of English industry was contemporaneous with the impoverishment of India. The reversal of this policy by the present Viceroy will earn India's undying gratitude, if he fosters Indian industries and not English industries in India. A witness before the Industries Commission stated that India should raise products for use outside, that is, as the East India Company put it, become a planta- tion for the supply of raw materials. The Viceroy must pardon us, if previous experi- ence has made us anxious on this point. We cannot forget that a century ago the traces of iron were found in the Central Pro- vinces, and that nothing was done to extract the metal — England then being the world's shop for iron to her own huge profit, and not

160 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

desiring a rival. It was left for Tata to seize the opportunity, and his shares of Rs. 30 are now sold at Rs. 1,180. He started a great industry, and Tata's steel is sought so largely that he cannot meet the demand. Had the iron been raised and worked here during these long years, we should not now be dependent on Britain for our machinery, the want of which cripples the efforts to found new in- dustries and to expand old ones, in order to supply the demand caused by the necessary absorption of factories in Great Britain for War work.

The Viceroy remarks truly that previous " efforts were more sporadic than systematic,'* but proceeds :

The marked success which has followed the organisation of research and demonstration work in scientific agriculture, and the assistance which has been given to the mineral industries by the Geologi- cal Survey, are striking examples that encourage a bolder policy on similar lines for the benefit of other and especially the manufacturing industries.

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 161

Here, again, we must pause to remark that some of these experiments in scientific agri- culture result in efforts to meet the demands of England, rather than those of India. India works up short-stapled cotton. Especially in her hand-loom industry, short-stapled cotton suits her. Lancashire wants long-stapled, and cannot get enough from the United States and Egypt. Therefore, India should substitute long- for short-stapled cotton. We confess we do not see the seqidtur. Nor do we find, in our study of English trade, that England, which is set up as an example to be copied, has followed self-denying ordinances, and has regulated her production so as to help foreign countries to her own detriment.

However, the War has done for India, in

awakening the interest of the Government

in her industries, that which the attempts of

Indian patriots have failed to do. The War

brought about the Industries Commission, and 11

162 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the need for munitions has forced industrial organisation for their production. It is for Indian merchants to see, by seizing and utilising the political weapon, that the organisa- tion and encouragement of industries by Government — unless it be a Home Govern- ment, under their own control— does not reduce Indians to a more subordinate position than they now hold. It is this danger which is playing a great part in the fear which has caused the Awakening of the Merchants. The tea industry, for instance, is in the hands of English planters, and while incomes drawn from other agricultural profits have been taxed, incomes derived from tea — which is certainly an agricultural profit — have wholly escaped till lately. If this policy be pursued, and the fostering of industries with Indian money places the industries in foreign hands, Indians will, even more than now, be dubashes, and clerks, and other employees of

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 163

English-captained firms, and will depend ever more and more on wages, driven lower and lower by increasing competition.

The industrial prospects in India are by no means discouraging, if Indians exert them- selves to hold their own. Mr. Tozer, in his British India and Its Trade, says :

The cotton and jute manufactures, already con- ducted on a large scale, offer scope for still further development. Sugar and tobacco are produced in large quantities, but both require the application of the latest scientific processes of cultivation and manufacture. Oil seeds might be crushed in India instead of being exported ; while cotton seeds, as yet imperfectly utilised, can be turned to good account. Hides and skins, now largely exported raw, might be more larj^ely tanned and dressed in India. Again, the woollen and silken fabrics manufactured in India are mosdy coarse fabrics and there is scope for the production of finer goods. Although railways make their own rolling stock, they have to import wheels and axles, tyres and other iron work. At present steel is manufactured on a very small scale, and the number of iron foundries and machine shops, although increasing, is capable of greater expansion. Machinery and machine tools have for the most part to be imported. Millions of

164 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

agriculturists and artisans use rude tools which might be replaced by similar articles that are more durable and of better make. Improved oil presses and hand- looms should find a profitable market. Paper-mills and flour mills might be established in greater numbers. There are openings also for the manu- facture of sewing machines, fire-works, rope, boots and shoes, saddlery, harness, clocks, watches, ani- line and alazarine dyes, electrical appliances, glass and glassware, tea chests, gloves, rice, starch, matches, lamps, candles, soap, linen, hardware and cutlery.

Obviously, India might be largely self- sufficing, and, as of old, export her surplus. But now her imports are rising, and under the present system her exports do not enrich her as they should.

Imports were steadily rising before the War, but dropped with it (amounts given in pounds sterling) :

1911-12— 92,383,200 Piece Goods 28,592,000 12-1 3 — 107,332,490 — 35,536,000

13-14 — 122,165,203 - 38,758,000

14-15— 91,952,600 - 28,643,000

15-16— 87,560,169 — 25,175,000

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 165

The previous five years also show gener- ally rising imports (amounts given in rupees) :

1906-7 — 135,50,85,676

7-8 - 162,71,55,234

8-9 — 143,89,75.796

9-10 — 154,4^,36,214

10-11 — 169,05,72,729

Exports exceeded imports, and the War has made difficulties in the way of realising payment. (Amounts given in pounds sterling.)

1911-12 — 147,879,060 12-13 — 160,899,289 13-14 — 162,807,900 14-15-118,323,300 '

15-16 - 128,356,619

Indian merchants have seen the swift ex- pansion of Japanese trade, and know that it is fostered by the Japanese Government both by protection and with bounties. They have to compete with it in their own land. Is it any wonder that they desire an Indian Government ? They see Japanese goods under- selling them and flooding their own markets.

166 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

Is it any wonder that they desire a Honie Government, that will put duties on these foreign goods and protect their own pro- ducts ?

The furious uprising of the European As- sociations, ever indifferent to politics which only concern Indian interests, has shown them that their trade rivals dread the transfer of power, because they fear to lose the unfair privileges and advantages which they have always enjoyed, since the humble traders of the seventeenth century became the masters of India. They are not accustomed to a strug- gle on equal terms, and the prospect dismays them. They want privilege, not justice and a fair field. Much of their fear and anger, the need felt by Sir Hugh Bray for English do- minance for the protection of English interests, lie in the fact that they dread the Budget of a Home Government, even more than they dread a fair trade competition.

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 167

The Indian merchants now realise that in the trade-war after the end of the present War, they will go down, unless they have power in their own country. Trade, commerce, industry, organised by the countrymen of the European Chambers of Commerce and Trade Associations, mean ruin to the Indian mer- chants, traders and manufacturers. The favouritism of Governments and English Banks has spelt hard struggle during the period when organisation was wanting. When it is accompanied by organisation created and ruled by the foreigners, it will spell ruin. Mr. J. W. Root has rightly observed that to give Great Britain, under present circum- stances,

the control over Indian foreign trade and inter- nal industry that would be secured by a common tariff would be an unpardonable iniquity. . . Can it be conceived that were India's fiscal arrangements placed to any considerable extent under the control of British legislators, they would not be regulated with an eye to British interests ? Intense jealousy

168 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

of India is always cropping up in everything affect- ing fiscal or industrial legislation.

Indian merchants are fully alive to this dan ger, and to avert it they are welcoming Home Rule.

The merchants also realise that fiscal auto- nomy can only come with political autonomy. Only the illogical demand fiscal autonomy and reject Home Rule. A budget framed by an Indian Finance Member would aim at a much increased expenditure on education, sanitation and irrigation — an expenditure that would result in increased capacity and increased health for the citizens and increased productiveness for the land. Railways would be constructed out of loans raised for the particular project, not out of revenue. Administration charges would be reduced by the reduction of salaries and greater economy. They have increased in a decade by Rs. 160 millions.

On the revenue side, the taxation on land would be lightened, so that cultivators

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 169

might make a decent living by their labour. Exports of Indian monopolies, such as jute and indigo, would be heavily taxed. Imports would be taxed according to India's needs, and heavy duties laid on bounty-fed products. Imported liquors would carry a prohibitory duty, and they were imported in 1910-11 to the value of Rs. 1,89,81,666. Pro- visions, which were imported to the value of over 3 crores of rupees, might also be heavily taxed, being a luxury. Sugar rose in five years from 10 crores of rupees to 14 crores, and should be heavily taxed, so as to encourage its growth here. Cotton piece-goods have risen from 37 crores to 41 crores and India should supply herself, as well as with silk piece-goods, risen from If crores to 2| crores. Army expenditure at the moment cannot be reduced, but later. Territorial Armies would be raised and large reserves gradually formed. For a time English troops would remain, as in

170 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the South African Union, but the short service system would be abolished, and recruiting charges reduced.

Even so hasty a glance over the economic condition of India makes very plain the reasons for the awakening of Indian Merchants, and their entry into the Home Rule Camp.

[e) The Awakening of the Women

The position of women in the ancient Aryan civilisation was a very noble one. The great majority married, becoming, as Manu said, the Light of the Home; some took up the ascetic life, remained unmarried, and sought the knowledge of Brahman. The story of the Rapi Damayanti, to whom her husband's Ministers came, when they were troubled by the Raja's gambling ; that of Gandharl, in the Council of Kings and warrior Chiefs, remon- strating with her headstrong son ; in later

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 171

days, those of Padmavati of Chittoor, of Mirabai of Marwar, the sweet poetess, of Tarabai of Thoda, the warrior, of Chand Bibi, the defender of Ahmednagar, of Ahalaya Bat of Indore, the great ruler — all these and countless others are well known.

Only in the last five or six generations have the Indian women slipped away from their place at their husbands' side, and left them unhelped in public life. Even now, they wield great influence over husband and son,, but lack thorough knowledge to aid. Culture has never forsaken them, but the English education of their husbands and sons, with the neglect of Samskirt and the Vernacular, have made a barrier between the culture of the husband and that of the wife, and have shut the woman out from her old sympathy with the larger life of men. While the interests of the husband have widened, those of the wife have narrowed. The materialising

172 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

of the husband has tended also, by re-action, to render the wife's religion less broad and wise, and by throwing her on the family priest for guidance in religion, instead, as of old, on her husband, has made the religion entirely one of devotion ; and lacking the strong stimulus of knowledge, it more easily slides down into superstition, into dependence on forms not understood.

The wish to save their sons from the materialising results of English education awoke keen sympathy among Indian mothers with the movement to make Hinduism an in- tegral part of education. It was, perhaps, the first movement in modern days which aroused among them in all parts of India a keen and living interest.

Then the troubles of Indians outside India roused the ever-quick sympathy of Indian women, and the attack in South Africa on the sacredness of Indian marriage drew large

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 173

numbers of them out of their homes to protest against the wrong.

The Partition of Bengal was bitterly resent- ed by Bengali women, and was another factor in the outward-turning change. When the editor of an Extremist newspaper was pro- secuted for sedition, convicted and sentenced, 500 Bengali women went to his mother to show their sympathy, not by condolences, but by congratulations. Such was the feeling of the well-born women of Bengal.

The Indentured Labour question, involving the dishonour of women, again, moved them deeply, and even sent a deputation to the Viceroy composed of women.

These were, perhaps, the chief outer causes; but deep in the heart of India's daughters arose the Mother's voice, calling on them to help her to arise, and to be once more mistress in her own household. Indian women, nursed on her old literature, with its wonderful ideals

174 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

of womanly perfection, could not remain indifferent to the great movement for India's liberty. And during the last few years the hidden fire long burning in their hearts, fire of love to Bharatamata, fire of resentment against the lessened influence of the religion which they passionately love, instinctive dislike of the foreigner as ruling in their land, have caused a marvellous awakening. The strength of the Home Rule movement is rendered tenfold greater by the adhesion to it of large numbers of women, who bring to its helping the uncalculating heroism, the endur- ance, the self-sacrifice, of the feminine nature. Our League's best recruits and recruiters are among the women of India, and the women of Madras boast that they marched in procession when the men were stopped, and that their prayers in the temples set the interned captives free. Home Rule has become so intertwined with religion by the prayers offered

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 175

up in the great southern Temples — sacred places of pilgrimage — and spreading from them to village temples, and also by its being preached, up and down the country, by Sadhus and Sannyasins, that it has become in the minds of the women and of the ever- religious masses, inextricably intertwined with religion. That is, in this country, the surest way of winning alike the women of the higher classes and the men and women vil- lagers. And that is why I just said that the two words, "Home Rule," have become a Mantram.

{/) The Awakening of the Masses

This is another startling phenomenon of our times, due of late to the teaching of Sadhus and Sannyasins and the campaign of prayer, just mentioned, but much more to the steady influence of the educated classes permeating

176 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the masses for very many years, the classes which, as we shall see, have their roots struck deep in the villages. It must be remembered that the raiyat, though innocent of English, has a culture of his own, made up of old tradi- tions and legends and folk-lore, coming down from time immemorial. He is religious, knows the great laws of Karma and Reincarnation, is industrious and shrewd. He cares very little for who is the " Sirkar," and very much for the agents who come to collect his tax, or to meddle with his fields. In the old days, which, for him still live, the Paiichayat managed the village affairs, and he was prosperous and contented, save when the King's tax-gatherer came, or soldiers harried his village. These were inevitable natural evils, like drought or flood ; and if a raid came or an invasion, they felt they were suffering with their King, as in the tax they were sharing with their King, whereas they are crushed now in an iron

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 177

machinery, without the human nexus that used to exist.

Home Rule has touched the raiyat through his village life, where the present order presses hardly upon him in ways that I shall refer to when dealing with agricultural conditions. He resents the rigid payment of tax in money instead of the variable tax in kind, the King's share of the produce. He resents the frequent resettlements, which force him to borrow from the money-lender to meet the higher claim. He wants the old Panchayat back again ; he wants that his village should be managed by himself and his fellows, and he wants to get rid of the tyranny of petty officials, who have replaced the old useful communal servants.

We cannot leave out of the causes which have helped to awaken the masses, the in- fluence of the Co-operative Movement, and the visits paid to villages by educated men for lectures on sanitation, hygiene, and other

12

178 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

subjects. Messrs. Moreland and Ewing writing in the Quarterly Review^ remarked :

The change of attitude on the part of the peasant, coupled with the progress made in organi- sation mainly through the Co-operative propaganda, is the outstanding achievement of the past decade, and at the same time the chief ground for the recent confidence with which agricultural reformers can now face the future.

In many parts of the country, where Con- ferences are carried on in the vernacular, the raiyats attend in large numbers, and often take part in the practical discussions on local affairs. They have begun to hope, and to feel that they are a part of the great National Movement, and that for them also a better day is dawning.

The submerged classes have also felt the touch of a ray of hope, and are lifting up their bowed heads, and claiming, with more and more definiteness, their place in the House- hold of the Mother. Movements, created by

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 179

themselves, or originating in the higher castes, have been stirring in them a sense of self- respect. The Brahmanas, awakening to a sense of their long-neglected duty, have done much to help them, and the prospect of their future brightens year by year.

By a just karma the higher castes are finding that attempts are being made by official and non-official Europeans to stir this class into opposition to Home Rule. They play upon the contempt with which they had been treated, and threaten them with a return of it, if " Brahmana Rule," as they call it, is gained. Twenty years ago and more, I ventured to urge the danger to Hindu Society that was hidden within the neglect of the submerged, and the folly of making it profitable for them to embrace Islam or Christianity, which offer- ed them a higher social status. Much has been done since then, but it is only a drop in the ocean needed. They know very well, of

180 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

course, that all the castes, not the highest alone, are equally guilty, but that is a sorry comfort. Large numbers of them are, happily, willing to forget the past, and to work with their Indian fellow-countrymen for the future. It is the urgent duty of every lover of the Motherland to draw these, her neglected children, into the common Home.

Mr. Gandhi's capital idea of a monster petition for the Congress-League Scheme, for which signatures were only to be taken after careful explanation of its scope and meaning, has proved to be an admirable method of political propaganda. The soil in the Madras Presidency had been well prepared by a wide distribution of popular literature, and the Pro- paganda Committee had scattered over the land in the vernaculars a simple explanation of Home Rule. The result of active work in the villages during the last year showed itself in the gathering in less than a month of nearly

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 181

a million signatures. They have been taken in duplicate, so that we have a record of a huge number of people, interested in Home Rule, and the hosts will increase in ever widening circles, preparing for the coming Freedom.

Why India Demands Home Rule

India demands Home Rule for two reasons, one essential and vital, the other less import- ant but weighty : First, because Freedom is the birthright of every Nation; secondly, because her most important interests are now made subservient to the interests of the British Empire without her consent, and her resources are not utilised for her greatest needs. It is enough only to mention the money spent on her Army, not for local defence but for Imperial purposes, as compared with that spent on primary Education.

182 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

I. The Vital Reason

[a] What is a Nation ?

Self-Govern merit is necessary to the self- respect and dignity of a People ; Other-Govern- ment emasculates a Nation, lowers its char- acter, and lessons its capacity. The wrong done by the Arms Act, which Raja Rampal Singh voiced in the Second Congress as a wrong which outweighed all the benefits of British Rule, was its weakening and debasing effect on Indian manhood. " We cannot," he declared, " be grateful to it for degrading our natures, for systematically crushing out all martial spirit, for converting a race of soldiers and heroes into a timid flock of quill-driving sheep." This was done not by the fact that a man did not carry arms — few carry them in England — but that men were deprived of the right to carry them. A Nation, an individual.

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 183

cannot develop his capacities to the utmost without Liberty. And this is recognised every- where except in India. As Mazzini truly said :

God has written a line of His thought over the cradle of every people. That is its special mission. It cannot be cancelled ; it must be freely developed.

For what is a Nation ? It is a spark of the Divine Fire, a fragment of the Divine Life, outbreathed into the world, and gathering round itself a mass of individuals, men, women and children, whom it binds together into one. Its qualities, its powers, in a word, its type, depend on the fragment of the Divine Life embodied in it, the Life which shapes it, evolves it, colours it and makes it One. The magic of Nationality is the feeling of oneness, and the use of Nationality is to serve the world in the particular way for which its type fits it. This is what Mazzini called " its special mission," the duty given to it by God in its birth-hour. Thus India had

184 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

the duty of spreading the idea of Dharma, Persia that of Purity, Egypt that of Science, Greece that of Beauty, Rome that of Law. But to render its full service to Humanity it must develop along its own lines, and be Self- determined in its evolution. It must be Itself, and not Another. The whole world suffers where a Nationality is distorted or suppressed, before its mission to the world is accomplished.

[b] The Cry for Self-Rule

Hence the cry of a Nation for Freedom, for Self-Rule, is not a cry of mere selfishness, demanding more Rights that it may enjoy more happiness. Even in that there is nothing wrong, for happiness means fulness of life, and to enjoy such fulness is a righteous claim. But the demand for Self-Rule is a demand for the evolution of its own nature for the Service of Humanity. It is a demand of

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 185

the deepest Spirituality, an expression of the longing to give its very best to the world. Hence dangers cannot check it, nor threats appal, nor offerings of greater pleasures lure it to give up its demand for Freedom. In the adapted words of a Christian Scripture, it passionately cries : " What shall it profit a Nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own Soul? What shall a Nation give in exchange for its Soul ? " Better hardship and freedom, than luxury and thraldom. This is the spirit of the Home Rule movement, and therefore it cannot be crushed, it cannot be destroyed, it is eternal and ever young. Nor can it be persuaded to exchange its birthright for any mess of efficiency-pottage at the hands of the bureaucracy.

[c] Stunting the Race

Coming closer to the daily life of the people as individuals, we see that the character of

186 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

each man, woman and child is degraded and weakened by a foreign administration, and this is most keenly felt by the best Indians. Speaking on the employment of Indians in the Public Services, Gopal Krshna Gokhale said :

A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on under the present system. We must live all the days of our life in an atmosphere of inferiority, and the tallest of us must bend, in order that the exigencies of the system may be satisfied. The upward impulse, if I may use such an expression, which every schoolboy at Eton or Harrow may feel, that he may one day be a Gladstone, a Nelson, or a Wellington, and which may draw forth the best efforts of which he is capable, that is denied to us. The full height to which our manhood is capable of rising can never be reached by us under the present system. The moral elevation which every Self-governing people feel cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents must gradually disappear owing to sheer disuse, till at last our lot, as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own country, is stereotyped.

The Hon. Mr. Bhupendranath Basu has spoken on similar lines :

A bureaucratic administration, conducted by an imported agency, and centering all power in its

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 187

hands, and undertaking all responsibility, has acted as a dead weight on the Soul of India, stifling in us all sense of initiative, for the lack of which we are condemned, atrophying the nerves of action, and, what is most serious, necessarily dwarfing in us all feeling of self-respect.

In this connection the warning of Lord Salisbury to Cooper's Hill students is signifi- cant:

No system of Government can be permanently safe where there is a feeling of inferiority or of mortification affecting the relations between the governing and the governed. There is nothing I would more earnestly wish to impress upon all who leave this country for the purpose of governing India than that, if they choose to be so, they are the only enemies England has to fear. They are the persons who can, if they will, deal a blow of the deadliest character at the future rule of England.

I have ventured to urge this danger, which has increased of late years, in consequence of the growing self-respect of the Indians. But the ostrich policy is thought to be preferable in my part of the country.

188 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

This stunting of the race begins with the education of the child. The Schools differen- tiate between British and Indian teachers ; the Colleges do the same. The students see first- class Indians superseded by young and third- rate foreigners ; the Principal of a College should be a foreigner ; foreign history is more important than Indian ; to have written on English villages- is a qualification for teaching economics in India ; the whole atmosphere of the School and the College emphasises the superiority of the foreigner, even when the professors abstain from open assertion thereof. The Education Department controls the edu- cation given, and it is planned on foreign models, and its object is to serve foreign rather than native ends, to make docile Government servants rather than patriotic citizens ; high spirits, courage, self-respect, are not encoura- ged, and docility is regarded as the most precious quality in the student; pride in

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 189

country, patriotism, ambition, are looked on as dangerous, and English, instead of Indian, Ideals are exalted ; the blessings of a foreign rule and the incapacity of Indians to manage their own affairs are constantly inculcated. What wonder that boys thus trained often turn out, as men, time-servers and sycophants, and, find- ing their legitimate ambitions frustrated, become selfish and care little for the public weal? Their own inferiority has been so driven into them during their most impression- able years, that they do not even feel what Mr. Asquith called the " intolerable degradation of a foreign yoke".

[d] India s Rights

It is not a question whether the rule is good or bad. German efficiency in Germany is far greater than English efficiency in England ; the Germans were better fed, had more

190 THE FUTURE OF INDIAN POLITICS

amusements and leisure, less crushing poverty than the English. But would any Englishman therefore desire to see Germans occupying all the highest positions in England ? Why not ? Because the righteous self-respect and dignity of the free man revolt against foreign domina- tion, however superior. As Mr. Asquith said at the beginning of the War, such a condition was " inconceivable and would be intolerable ". Why then is it the one conceivable system here in India ? Why is it not felt by all Indians to be intolerable ? It is because it has become a habit, bred in us from childhood, to regard the Sahab-log as our natural superiors, and the greatest injury British rule has done to Indians is to deprive them of the natural instinct born in all free peoples, the feeling of an inherent right to Self- determination, to be themselves. Indian dress, Indian food, Indian ways, Indian customs, are all looked on as second-rate ;

THE NEW SPIRIT IN INDIA 191

Indian mother-tongue and Indian literature cannot make an educated man. Indians as well as Englishmen take it for granted that the natural rights of every Nation do not belong to them ; they claim " a