Part 20 (1/2)
[279] Dr. Bhalchandra Krishna. Quoted by A. Yusuf Ali, _Life and Labour in India_, p. 35 (London, 1907).
[280] Fisher, pp. 51-52.
[281] Bertrand, p. 141.
[282] Sir V. Chirol, ”England's Peril in Egypt,” from the London _Times_, 1919.
[283] See Bertrand and Fisher, _supra_.
CHAPTER IX
SOCIAL UNREST AND BOLSHEVISM
Unrest is the natural concomitant of change--particularly of sudden change. Every break with past, however normal and inevitable, implies a necessity for readjustment to altered conditions which causes a temporary sense of restless disharmony until the required adjustment has been made. Unrest is not an exceptional phenomenon; it is always latent in every human society which has not fallen into complete stagnation, and a slight amount of unrest should be considered a sign of healthy growth rather than a symptom of disease. In fact, the minimum degrees of unrest are usually not called by that name, but are considered mere incidents of normal development. Under normal circ.u.mstances, indeed, the social organism functions like the human organism: it is being incessantly destroyed and as incessantly renewed in conformity with the changing conditions of life. These changes are sometimes very considerable, but they are so gradual that they are effected almost without being perceived. A healthy organism well attuned to its environment is always plastic. It instinctively senses environmental changes and adapts itself so rapidly that it escapes the injurious consequences of disharmony.
Far different is the character of unrest's acuter manifestations. These are infallible symptoms of sweeping changes, sudden breaks with the past, and profound maladjustments which are not being rapidly rectified.
In other words, acute unrest denotes social ill-health and portends the possibility of one of those violent crises known as ”revolutions.”
The history of the Moslem East well exemplifies the above generalizations. The formative period of Saracenic civilization was characterized by rapid change and an intense idealistic ferment. The great ”Motazelite” movement embraced many shades of thought, its radical wing professing religious, political, and social doctrines of a violent revolutionary nature. But this changeful period was superficial and brief. Arab vigour and the Islamic spirit proved unable permanently to leaven the vast inertia of the ancient East. Soon the old traditions rea.s.serted themselves--somewhat modified, to be sure, yet basically the same Saracenic civilization became stereotyped, ossified, and with this ossification changeful unrest died away. Here and there the radical tradition was preserved and secretly handed down by a few obscure sects like the Kharidjites of Inner Arabia and the Bettas.h.i.+ dervishes; but these were mere cryptic episodes, of no general significance.
With the Mohammedan Revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, symptoms of social unrest appeared once more. Wahabism aimed not merely at a reform of religious abuses but was also a general protest against the contemporary decadence of Moslem society. In many cases it took the form of a popular revolt against established governments. The same was true of the correlative Babbist movement in Persia, which took place about the same time.[284]
And of course these nascent stirrings were greatly stimulated by the flood of Western ideas and methods which, as the nineteenth century wore on, increasingly permeated the East. What, indeed, could be more provocative of unrest of every description than the resulting transformation of the Orient--a transformation so sudden, so intense, and necessitating so concentrated a process of adaptation that it was basically revolutionary rather than evolutionary in its nature? The details of these profound changes--political, religious, economic, social--we have already studied, together with the equally profound disturbance, bewilderment, and suffering afflicting all cla.s.ses in this eminently transition period.
The essentially revolutionary nature of this transition period, as exemplified by India, is well described by a British economist.[285]
What, he asks, could be more anachronistic than the contrast between rural and urban India? ”Rural India is primitive or mediaeval; city India is modern.” In city India you will find every symbol of Western life, from banks and factories down to the very ”sandwichmen that you left in the London gutters.” Now all this co-exists beside rural India. ”And it is surely a fact unique in economic history that they should thus exist side by side. The present condition of India does not correspond with any period of European economic history.” Imagine the effect in Europe of setting down modern and mediaeval men together, with utterly disparate ideas. That has not happened in Europe because ”European progress in the economic world has been evolutionary”; a process spread over centuries.
In India, on the other hand, this economic transformation has been ”revolutionary” in character.
How unevolutionary is India's economic transformation is seen by the condition of rural India.
”Rural India, though chiefly characterized by primitive usage, has been invaded by ideas that are intensely hostile to the old state of things It is primitive, _but not consistently primitive_. Compet.i.tive wages are paid side by side with customary wages. Prices are sometimes fixed by custom, but sometimes, too, by free economic causes. From the midst of a population deeply rooted in the soil, men are being carried away by the desire of better wages. In short, economic motives have suddenly and partially intruded themselves in the realm of primitive morality. And, if we turn to city India, we see a similar, though inverted, state of things.... In neither case has the mixture been harmonious or the fusion complete. Indeed, the two orders are too unrelated, too far apart, to coalesce with ease....
”India, then, is in a state of economic revolution throughout all the cla.s.ses of an enormous and complex society. The only period in which Europe offered even faint a.n.a.logies to modern India was the Industrial Revolution, from which even now we have not settled down into comparative stability. We may reckon it as a fortunate circ.u.mstance for Europe that the intellectual movement which culminated in the French Revolution did not coincide with the Industrial Revolution. If it had, it is possible that European society might have been hopelessly wrecked.
But, as it was, even when the French Revolution had spent its force in the conquests of Napoleon, the Industrial Revolution stirred up enough social and political discontent. When whole cla.s.ses of people are obliged by economic revolution to change their mode of life, it is inevitable that many should suffer. Discontent is roused. Political and destructive movements are certain to ensue. Not only the Revolutions of '48, but also the birth of the Socialist Party sprang from the Industrial Revolution.
”But that revolution was not nearly so sweeping as that which is now in operation in India. The invention of machinery and steam-power was, in Europe, but the crowning event of a long series of years in which commerce and industry had been constantly expanding, in which capital had been largely acc.u.mulated, in which economic principles had been gradually spreading.... No, the Indian economic revolution is vastly greater and more fundamental than our Industrial Revolution, great as that was. Railways have been built through districts where travel was almost impossible, and even roads are unknown. Factories have been built, and filled by men unused to industrial labour. Capital has been poured into the country, which was unprepared for any such development.
And what are the consequences? India's social organization is being dissolved. The Brahmins are no longer priests. The ryot is no longer bound to the soil. The banya is no longer the sole purveyor of capital.
The hand-weaver is threatened with extinction, and the bra.s.s-worker can no longer ply his craft. Think of the dislocation which this sudden change has brought about, of the many who can no longer follow their ancestral vocations, of the commotion which a less profound change produced in Europe, and you will understand what is the chief motive-power of the political unrest. It is small wonder. The wonder is that the unrest has been no greater than it is. Had India not been an Asiatic country, she would have been in fierce revolution long ago.”
The above lines were of course written in the opening years of the twentieth century, before the world had been shattered by Armageddon and aggressive social revolution had established itself in semi-Asiatic Russia. But even during those pre-war years, other students of the Orient were predicting social disturbances of increasing gravity. Said the Hindu nationalist leader, Bipin Chandra Pal: ”This so-called unrest is not really political. It is essentially an intellectual and spiritual upheaval, the forerunner of a mighty social revolution, with a new organon and a new philosophy of life behind it.”[286] And the French publicist Chailley wrote of India: ”There will be a series of economic revolutions, which must necessarily produce suffering and struggle.”[287]
During this pre-war period the increased difficulty of living conditions, together with the adoption of Western ideas of comfort and kindred higher standards, seem to have been engendering friction between the different strata of the Oriental population. In 1911 a British sanitary expert a.s.signed ”wretchedness” as the root-cause of India's political unrest. After describing the deplorable living conditions of the Indian ma.s.ses, he wrote: ”It will of course be said at once that these conditions have existed in India from time immemorial, and are no more likely to cause unrest now than previously; but in my opinion unrest has always existed there in a subterranean form. Moreover, in the old days, the populace could make scarcely any comparison between their own condition and that of more fortunate people; now they can compare their own slums and terrible 'native quarters' with the much better ordered cantonments, stations, and houses of the British officials and even of their own wealthier brethren. So far as I can see, such misery is always the fundamental cause of all popular unrest.... Seditious meetings, political chatter, and 'aspirations' of babus and demagogues are only the superficial manifestations of the deeper disturbance.”[288]
This growing social friction was indubitably heightened by the lack of interest of Orientals in the sufferings of all persons not bound to them by family, caste, or customary ties. Throughout the East, ”social service,” in the Western sense, is practically unknown. This fact is noted by a few Orientals themselves. Says an Indian writer, speaking of Indian town life: ”There is no common measure of social conduct....
Hitherto, social reform in India has taken account only of individual or family life. As applied to mankind in the ma.s.s, and especially to those soulless agglomerations of seething humanity which we call cities, it is a gospel yet to be preached.”[289] As an American sociologist remarked of the growing slum evil throughout the industrialized Orient: ”The greatest danger is due to the fact that Orientals do not have the high Western sense of the value of the life of the individual, and are, comparatively speaking, without any restraining influence similar to our own enlightened public opinion, which has been roused by the struggles of a century of industrial strife. Unless these elements can be supplied, there is danger of suffering and of abuses worse than any the West has known.”[290]
All this diffused social unrest was centring about two recently emerged elements: the Western-educated _intelligentsia_ and the industrial proletariat of the factory towns. The revolutionary tendencies of the _intelligentsia_, particularly of its half-educated failures, have been already noted, and these latter have undoubtedly played a leading part in all the revolutionary disturbances of the modern Orient, from North Africa to China.[291] Regarding the industrial proletariat, some writers think that there is little immediate likelihood of their becoming a major revolutionary factor, because of their traditionalism, ignorance, and apathy, and also because there is no real connection between them and the _intelligentsia_, the other centre of social discontent.
The French economist Metin states this view-point very well. Speaking primarily of India, he writes: ”The Nationalist movement rises from the middle cla.s.ses and manifests no systematic hostility toward the capitalists and great proprietors; in economic matters it is on their side.”[292] As for the proletariat: ”The coolies do not imagine that their lot can be bettered. Like the ryots and the agricultural labourers, they do not show the least sign of revolt. To whom should they turn? The ranks of traditional society are closed to them. People without caste, the coolies are despised even by the old-style artisan, proud of his caste-status, humble though that be. To fall to the job of a coolie is, for the Hindu, the worst decla.s.sment. The factory workers are not yet numerous enough to form a compact and powerful proletariat, able to exert pressure on the old society. Even if they do occasionally strike, they are as far from the modern Trade-Union as they are from the traditional working-caste. Neither can they look for leaders.h.i.+p to the 'intellectual proletariat'; for the Nationalist movement has not emerged from the 'bourgeois' phase, and always leans on the capitalists....