Part 15 (1/2)
For many generations the Moslem hold on India was confined to the north.
Then, early in the sixteenth century, the great Turko-Mongol leader Baber entered India and founded the ”Mogul” Empire. Baber and his successors overran even the south, and united India politically as it had never been united before. But even this conquest was superficial.
The Brahmins, threatened with destruction, preached a Hindu revival; the Mogul dynasty petered out; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Mogul Empire collapsed, leaving India a welter of warring princ.i.p.alities, Mohammedan and Hindu, fighting each other for religion, for politics, or for sheer l.u.s.t of plunder.
Out of this anarchy the British rose to power. The British were at first merely one of several other European elements--Portuguese, Dutch, and French--who established small settlements along the Indian coasts. The Europeans never dreamed of conquering India while the Mogul power endured. In fact, the British connection with India began as a purely trading venture--the East India Company. But when India collapsed into anarchy the Europeans were first obliged to acquire local authority to protect their ”factories,” and later were lured into more ambitious schemes by the impotence of petty rulers. Gradually the British ousted their European rivals and established a solid political foothold in India. The one stable element in a seething chaos, the British inevitably extended their authority. At first they did so reluctantly.
The East India Company long remained primarily a trading venture, aiming at dividends rather than dominion. However, it later evolved into a real government with an ambitious policy of annexation. This in turn awakened the fears of many Indians and brought on the ”Mutiny” of 1857. The mutiny was quelled, the East India Company abolished, and India came directly under the British Crown, Queen Victoria being later proclaimed Empress of India. These events in turn resulted not only in a strengthening of British political authority but also in an increased penetration of Western influences of every description. Roads, railways, and ca.n.a.ls opened up and unified India as never before; the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez facilitated communication with Europe; while education on European lines spread Western ideas.
Over this rapidly changing India stood the British ”Raj”--a system of government unique in the world's history. It was the government of a few hundred highly skilled administrative experts backed by a small professional army, ruling a vast agglomeration of subject peoples. It was frankly an absolute paternalism, governing as it saw fit, with no more responsibility to the governed than the native despots whom it had displaced. But it governed well. In efficiency, honesty, and sense of duty, the government of India is probably the best example of benevolent absolutism that the world has ever seen. It gave India profound peace. It played no favourites, holding the scales even between rival races, creeds, and castes. Lastly, it made India a real political ent.i.ty--something which India had never been before. For the first time in its history, India was firmly united under one rule--the rule of the _Pax Britannica_.
Yet the very virtues of British rule sowed the seeds of future trouble.
Generations grew up, peacefully united in unprecedented acquaintances.h.i.+p, forgetful of past ills, seeing only European shortcomings, and, above all, familiar with Western ideas of self-government, liberty, and nationality. In India, as elsewhere in the East, there was bound to arise a growing movement of discontent against Western rule--a discontent varying from moderate demands for increasing autonomy to radical demands for immediate independence.
Down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, organized political agitation against the British ”Raj” was virtually unknown. Here and there isolated individuals uttered half-audible protests, but these voices found no popular echo. The Indian ma.s.ses, pre-occupied with the ever-present problem of getting a living, accepted pa.s.sively a government no more absolute, and infinitely more efficient, than its predecessors. Of anything like self-conscious Indian ”Nationalism” there was virtually no trace.
The first symptom of organized discontent was the formation of the ”Indian National Congress” in the year 1885. The very name showed that the British Raj, covering all India, was itself evoking among India's diverse elements a certain common point of view and aspiration. However, the early congresses were very far from representing Indian public opinion, in the general sense of the term. On the contrary, these congresses represented merely a small cla.s.s of professional men, journalists, and politicians, all of them trained in Western ideas. The European methods of education which the British had introduced had turned out an Indian _intelligentsia_, conversant with the English language and saturated with Westernism.
This new _intelligentsia_, convinced as it was of the value of Western ideals and achievements, could not fail to be dissatisfied with many aspects of Indian life. In fact, its first efforts were directed, not so much to politics, as to social and economic reforms like the suppression of child-marriage, the remarriage of widows, and wider education. But, as time pa.s.sed, matters of political reform came steadily to the fore.
Saturated with English history and political philosophy as they were, the Indian intellectuals felt more and more keenly their total lack of self-government, and aspired to endow India with those blessings of liberty so highly prized by their English rulers. Soon a vigorous native press developed, preaching the new gospel, welding the intellectuals into a self-conscious unity, and moulding a genuine public opinion. By the close of the nineteenth century the Indian _intelligentsia_ was frankly agitating for sweeping political innovations like representative councils, increasing control over taxation and the executive, and the opening of the public services to Indians all the way up the scale.
Down to the closing years of the nineteenth century Indian discontent was, as already said, confined to a small cla.s.s of more or less Europeanized intellectuals who, despite their a.s.sumption of the t.i.tle, could hardly be termed ”Nationalists” in the ordinary sense of the word.
With a few exceptions, their goal was neither independence nor the elimination of effective British oversight, but rather the reforming of Indian life along Western lines, including a growing degree of self-government under British paramount authority.
But by the close of the nineteenth century there came a change in the situation. India, like the rest of the Orient, was stirring to a new spirit of political and racial self-consciousness. True nationalist symptoms began to appear. Indian scholars delved into their musty chronicles and sacred texts, and proclaimed the glories of India's historic past. Reformed Hindu sects like the Arya Somaj lent religious sanctions. The little band of Europeanized intellectuals was joined by other elements, thinking, not in terms of piecemeal reforms on Western models, but of a new India, rejuvenated from its own vital forces, and free to work out its own destiny in its own way. From the nationalist ranks now arose the challenging slogan: ”Bandemataram!” (”Hail, Motherland!”)[194]
The outstanding feature about this early Indian nationalism was that it was a distinctively Hindu movement. The Mohammedans regarded it with suspicion or hostility. And for this they had good reasons. The ideal of the new nationalists was Aryan India, the India of the ”Golden Age.”
”Back to the Vedas!” was a nationalist watchword, and this implied a veneration for the past, including a revival of aggressive Brahminism.
An extraordinary change came over the _intelligentsia_. Men who, a few years before, had proclaimed the superiority of Western ideas and had openly flouted ”superst.i.tions” like idol-wors.h.i.+p, now denounced everything Western and reverently sacrificed to the Hindu G.o.ds. The ”sacred soil” of India must be purged of the foreigner.[195] But the ”foreigner,” as these nationalists conceived him, was not merely the Englishman; he was the Mohammedan as well. This was stirring up the past with a vengeance. For centuries the great Hindu-Mohammedan division had run like a chasm athwart India. It had never been closed, but it had been somewhat veiled by the neutral overlords.h.i.+p of the British Raj. Now the veil was torn aside, and the Mohammedans saw themselves menaced by a recrudescence of militant Hinduism like that which had shattered the Mogul Empire after the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb two hundred years before. The Mohammedans were not merely alarmed; they were infuriated as well. Remembering the glories of the Mogul Empire just as the Hindus did the glories of Aryan India, they considered themselves the rightful lords of the land, and had no mind to fall under the sway of despised ”Idolaters.” The Mohammedans had no love for the British, but they hated the Hindus, and they saw in the British Raj a bulwark against the potential menace of hereditary enemies who outnumbered them nearly five to one. Thus the Mohammedans denounced Hindu nationalism and proclaimed their loyalty to the Raj. To be sure, the Indian Moslems were also affected by the general spirit of unrest which was sweeping over the East. They too felt a quickened sense of self-consciousness. But, being a minority in India, their feelings took the form, not of territorial ”patriotism,” but of those more diffused sentiments, Pan-Islamism and Pan-Islamic nationalism, which we have already discussed.[196]
Early Indian nationalism was not merely Hindu in character; it was distinctly ”Brahminical” as well. More and more the Brahmins became the driving-power of the movement, seeking to perpetuate their supremacy in the India of the morrow as they had enjoyed it in the India of the past.
But this aroused apprehension in certain sections of Hindu society. Many low-castes and Pariahs began to fear that an independent or even autonomous India might be ruled by a tyrannical Brahmin oligarchy which would deny them the benefits they now enjoyed under British rule.[197]
Also, many of the Hindu princes disliked the thought of a theocratic regime which might reduce them to shadows.[198] Thus the nationalist movement stood out as an alliance between the Brahmins and the Western-educated _intelligentsia_, who had pooled their ambitions in a programme for jointly ruling India.
Quickened by this ambition and fired by religious zeal, the nationalist movement rapidly acquired a fanatical temper characterized by a mystical abhorrence of everything Western and a ferocious hatred of all Europeans. The Russo-j.a.panese War greatly inflamed this spirit, and the very next year (1905) an act of the Indian Government precipitated the gathering storm. This act was the famous Part.i.tion of Bengal. The part.i.tion was a mere administrative measure, with no political intent.
But the nationalists made it a ”vital issue,” and about this grievance they started an intense propaganda that soon filled India with seditious unrest. The leading spirit in this agitation was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who has been called ”the father of Indian unrest.” Tilak typified the nationalist movement. A Brahmin with an excellent Western education, he was the sworn foe of English rule and Western civilization. An able propagandist, his speeches roused his hearers to frenzy, while his newspaper, the _Yugantar_, of Calcutta, preached a campaign of hate, a.s.sa.s.sination, and rebellion. Tilak's incitements soon produced tangible results, numerous riots, ”dacoities,” and murders of Englishmen taking place. And of course the _Yugantar_ was merely one of a large number of nationalist organs, some printed in the vernacular and others in English, which vied with one another in seditious invective.
The violence of the nationalist press may be judged by a few quotations.
”Revolution,” a.s.serted the _Yugantar_, ”is the only way in which a slavish society can save itself. If you cannot prove yourself a man in life, play the man in death. Foreigners have come and decided how you are to live. But how you are to die depends entirely upon yourself.”
”Let preparations be made for a general revolution in every household!
The handful of police and soldiers will never be able to withstand this ocean of revolutionists. Revolutionists may be made prisoners and may die, but thousands of others will spring into their places. Do not be afraid! With the blood of heroes the soil of Hindustan is ever fertile.
Do not be downhearted. There is no dearth of heroes. There is no dearth of money; glory awaits you! A single frown (a few bombs) from your eyes has struck terror into the heart of the foe! The uproar of panic has filled the sky. Swim with renewed energy in the ocean of bloodshed!” The a.s.sa.s.sination note was vehemently stressed. Said S. Krishnavarma in _The Indian Sociologist_: ”Political a.s.sa.s.sination is not murder, and the rightful employment of physical force connotes 'force used defensively against force used aggressively.'” ”The only subscription required,”
stated the _Yugantar_, ”is that every reader shall bring the head of a European.” Not even women and children were spared. Commenting on the murder of an English lady and her daughter, the _Yugantar_ exclaimed exultantly: ”Many a female demon must be killed in course of time, in order to extirpate the race of Asuras from the breast of the earth.” The fanaticism of the men (usually very young men) who committed these a.s.sa.s.sinations may be judged by the statement of the murderer of a high English official, Sir Curzon-Wyllie, made shortly before his execution: ”I believe that a nation held down by foreign bayonets is in a perpetual state of war. Since open battle is rendered impossible to a disarmed race, I attacked by surprise; since guns were denied to me, I drew my pistol and fired. As a Hindu I feel that wrong to my country is an insult to the G.o.ds. Her cause is the cause of Shri Ram; her service is the service of Shri Krishna. Poor in wealth and intellect, a son like myself has nothing else to offer the Mother but his own blood, and so I have sacrificed the same on Her altar. The only lesson required in India at present is to learn how to die, and the only way to teach it is to die ourselves; therefore I die and glory in my martyrdom. This war will continue between England and India so long as the Hindee and English races last, if the present unnatural relation does not cease.”[199]
The government's answer to this campaign of sedition and a.s.sa.s.sination was of course stern repression. The native press was muzzled, the agitators imprisoned or executed, and the hands of the authorities were strengthened by punitive legislation. In fact, so infuriated was the European community by the murders and outrages committed by the nationalists that many Englishmen urged the withdrawal of such political privileges as did exist, the limiting of Western education, and the establishment of extreme autocratic rule. These angry counsels were at once caught up by the nationalists, resulted in fresh outrages, and were answered by more punishment and fresh menaces. Thus the extremists on both sides lashed each other to hotter fury and worsened the situation.
For several years India seethed with an unrest which jailings, hangings, and deportations did little to allay.