Part 5 (1/2)

representation, _i.e._ the creation of separate const.i.tuencies for various communities, which, however important or however much ent.i.tled to make their voices heard, might be submerged in const.i.tuencies based solely on territorial representation. ”Communal representation” had been conceded to so powerful a minority as the Mahomedans under the Indian Councils Act of 1909; and the Report admitted that it could not be withdrawn from them, and that it might have to be conceded to other communities, such as the Sikhs. At the same time it developed at great length all the theoretical arguments against the principle, viz. that it is opposed to history, that it perpetuates cla.s.s division, that it stereotypes existing relations based on traditions and prejudices which we should do everything to discourage.

At the risk even of travelling somewhat beyond the expressed terms of their reference, the Secretary of State and the Viceroy could not but recognise that the effects of great const.i.tutional reforms, of which the statutory application would be necessarily confined to that part of India that is under direct British administration, must nevertheless react upon that other smaller but still very considerable part of India which enjoys more or less complete internal autonomy under its own hereditary rulers. A growing number of questions, and especially economic questions, must arise in future, which will affect the interests of the Native States as directly as those of the rest of India; and their rulers may legitimately claim, as the Report plainly admitted, to have const.i.tutional opportunities of expressing their views and wishes and of conferring with one another and with the Government of India. For such purposes the Report included suggestions which were to take shape in the establishment of the Chamber of Princes.

One other recommendation of the Report deserves special notice, as it shows the authors to have realised how seriously Parliament, though more directly responsible than ever for the exercise of due vigilance over Indian affairs after the transfer to the Crown, had lost touch with them, since, with the disappearance of the East India Company after the Mutiny, it ceased to hold the regular and exhaustive inquiries which the renewal of the Charter had until then periodically required. As their own scheme was designed merely to give Parliament a lead in the first of a progressive series of const.i.tutional reforms, they recommended that a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the working of the new Indian inst.i.tutions and the general progress of the people of India should at stated intervals determine the further stages of advance towards the final goal of self-government. Such a Commission, armed with power to examine witnesses, would not only enlighten British public opinion, but also probe Indian opinion in a much more searching way than can be done by impa.s.sioned and irresponsible arguments and counter-arguments in the press and on platforms. It would, above all, a.s.sist Parliament to master from time to time the many-sided problem whose progressive solution it would have constantly to watch and periodically to determine.

The Report was a doc.u.ment of such magnitude and complexity, and went so boldly to the roots of Indian government and administration, that even amongst the absorbing preoccupations of the war, which was only just emerging for the Allies from the terrible crisis of March-April 1918, its publication at once provoked a considerable stream of criticism. On the whole, British public opinion was favourable, though there was a small but not uninfluential group of British reactionaries who at once took up, and have ever since maintained, the position that the Report meant, not the mending, for which they saw, moreover, very little need, but the ending of British rule in India. Equal divergencies occurred in Indian public opinion. An Extremist gathering in Madras declared roundly that ”the scheme is so radically wrong in principle and in detail that in our opinion it is impossible to modify or improve it.” In vain had Mrs. Besant been released from her modern _oubliette_ before Mr. Montagu started for India. ”The scheme,” she wrote in her haste, on the very day of its publication, ”is unworthy to be offered by England or to be accepted by India.” In vain had Mr. Montagu allowed himself to be garlanded by Mr. Tilak, who was not far behind Mrs. Besant in p.r.o.nouncing the scheme to be ”entirely unacceptable.” The Calcutta Provincial Conference of the Congress party held a few days later abounded in the same sense, and a special session of the whole Congress convoked in August in Bombay was only in form somewhat less bitterly uncompromising, and only because it began to realise that the secession of the more moderate elements was likely to reduce ”the Parliament of India” to a mere rump. Moderate opinion had not committed itself to acceptance of the scheme as precipitately as the Extremists to its rejection, but against rejection pure and simple it set its face at once, and it rallied so steadily and surely to acceptance that few of the Moderates attended the Provincial Congress, where they were promptly howled down, and they determined to hold a Conference of their own in opposition to the special Congress session. At this Conference, as well as in the Committee of non-official members of the Indian Legislative Council, there was a good deal of disjointed criticism of various recommendations in the Report, not infrequently due to misunderstanding of their import, but on the whole it was recognised as representing a great triumph for the cause of political progress on const.i.tutional lines and therefore for the educated opinion of India. The breach between the Extremists and the Moderates was clearly defined by Mr. B.L.

Mitter, a prominent Moderate of Calcutta and a member of the new Moderate organisation, the ”National Liberal League”:

The Extremists would have nothing to do with the English in the Government or outside; the Moderates consider co-operation with the English necessary for national development, political, industrial, economic, and otherwise. The Extremists would straightway a.s.sume full responsibility of Government; the Moderates think that would lead to chaos, and would proceed by stages. It is the difference between cataclysm and evolution. The Extremists' ideal is destruction of the existing order of things in the hope that something better will take its place, for nothing can be worse than what is; the Moderates' ideal is formation of a new order of things on definite progressive lines. One is chance, the other is design.

The primary difference (so far as methods are concerned) is that the Extremists' method is not necessarily const.i.tutional; the Moderates' method always const.i.tutional. Some Extremists use violence, others work secretly and spread discontent and disaffection. Others again, pretending to follow legitimate methods of agitation, take care not to discourage unconst.i.tutional methods or even crimes, nay, they miss no opportunity to applaud criminals as martyrs. There are others, again, who merely idealise and are content with rousing the pa.s.sions of the people. Intrigue and abuse are the general weapons in the Extremists' armoury. The Moderates always act openly and with dignity, and follow lawful methods of agitation. The Extremists always oppose the Government. The Moderates co-operate with authority, and oppose when necessary in the interests of the country. Lastly, the Extremists appeal only to the pa.s.sions of the people; the Moderates appeal to their reason.

Later developments in India itself were unfortunately to play once more into the hands of the Extremists, and the leaders.h.i.+p was to pa.s.s from Mr. Tilak, who was growing old and died in the summer of 1920, and from Mrs. Besant too, who, after being bitterly reviled by her former ally, at last saw the error of her ways and finally went over to the Moderate camp with the diminis.h.i.+ng remnants of her influence, into the hands of a new and strange figure in Indian politics, Mr. Gandhi, endowed with very different qualities and greater spiritual influence than either of them.

But before bringing him on to the stage it may be well to follow the progress of Indian reforms at home after the publication of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. It had been laid before Parliament without any _imprimatur_ from the Cabinet, and some months pa.s.sed before, with the conclusion of the war, His Majesty's Government found leisure to give it their collective consideration. Not till June 1919 was Mr.

Montagu in a position to move in the House of Commons the second reading of the great Bill drafted with their authority to give effect in all essentials to the recommendations of the Report. His powerful and lucid exposition of its provisions and of the whole situation with which England was confronted in India made a deep impression on the House, though it by no means disarmed opposition, and the Bill was remitted for consideration to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses which, chosen impartially from all parties, proceeded to take a large ma.s.s of evidence from British and Indian witnesses of every political complexion, and delivered a very weighty report in November. The views of the Government of India and of the Provincial Governments, by no means always in accord amongst themselves, had also been before the Committee, as well as those of the members of the Secretary of State's Council. But the alternative proposals submitted were either impracticable or ineffective, and the Bill which, in so far as it was modified in accordance with its recommendations, a.s.sumed an even more liberal character. Mr. Montagu's hands were thus strengthened for the final debates in the House of Commons in which the opposition proved sterile in argument and weak in numbers, and the Bill was pa.s.sed through both Houses of Parliament in time for the const.i.tutional a.s.sent of the Crown to be given to it and for the King-Emperor to address a solemn proclamation to the Viceroy, Princes, and people of India on the eminently appropriate date of Christmas Eve 1920. This Royal message of peace and goodwill set forth in simple language both the purposes and the genesis of the Act:

I have watched with understanding and sympathy the growing desire of my Indian people for representative inst.i.tutions. Starting from small beginnings, this ambition has steadily strengthened its hold upon the intelligence of the country. It has pursued its course along const.i.tutional channels with sincerity and courage. It has survived the discredit which at times and in places lawless men sought to cast upon it by acts of violence committed under the guise of patriotism. It has been stirred to more vigorous life by the ideals for which the British Commonwealth fought in the Great War, and it claims support in the part which India has taken in our common struggles, anxieties, and victories.

In truth, the desire after political responsibility has its source at the root of the British connection with India. It has sprung inevitably from the deeper and wider studies of human thought and history which that connection has opened to the Indian people.

Without it the work of the British in India would have been incomplete. It was, therefore, with a wise judgment that the beginnings of representative inst.i.tutions were laid many years ago.

Their scope has been extended stage by stage until there now lies before us a definite step on the road to responsible government.

The Act, which implemented all the princ.i.p.al recommendations of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, superseded within little more than fifty years the Government of India Act of 1858, under which the Crown first a.s.sumed direct responsibility for the government and administration of India. The Royal message certainly did not exaggerate its significance.

Its actual provisions are indeed of less moment than its larger implications and the spirit in which it will be interpreted and carried into effect. For the right spirit to crown the new Const.i.tution with success we must look to Indians and British alike, not forgetting that the changes introduced into the structure of Indian government and administration are themselves only ancillary to the still more important changes which must result from the recognition of Indian public opinion as a powerful and ultimately paramount influence in the shaping of policy. Such recognition must follow not only from the creation of Indian representative a.s.semblies with a large majority of Indian elected members but from the appointment of Indians, three in number already in the Government of India, three in the Secretary of State's Council in Whitehall, and in varying numbers both as Ministers and members of the Executive Councils in Provincial Governments. Side by side with this progressive Indianisation of the Executive of which we are witnessing only the first stage, the Indianisation of the administrative departments and of the public services, and not least of the Indian Civil Service, is bound to proceed with increasing rapidity. Indians can hardly fail to realise that, perhaps for a long time to come, they will require the experience and driving power of Englishmen, but they will inevitably claim increasing control over policy, now formally conceded to them in a large Provincial sphere, until it shall have extended in successive stages to the whole sphere of Provincial Government and ultimately to the Central Government itself. Then, and then only, India will actually emerge into complete Dominion Self-Government. But we shall do well to remember, and Indians will certainly not allow us to forget, that the terms of equality, on which her representatives are now admitted to the innermost counsels of the Empire, have already in many respects outstripped the Act of 1919.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _The Evolution of Mrs. Besant_, by the Editor of _Justice_, Madras, _Justice_ Printing Works, 1918.

CHAPTER IX

THE EMERGENCE OF MR. GANDHI

Before this great statute could be brought into operation, and even whilst Parliament was still laboriously evolving it, a strange and incalculable figure was coming to the forefront in India, who, favoured by an extraordinary combination of untoward circ.u.mstances, was to rally round him some of the most and many of the least reputable forces which, sometimes under new disguises, the old and pa.s.sive civilisation of India is instinctively driven to oppose to the disintegrating impact upon it of the active and disturbing energies of Western civilisation. Saint and prophet in the eyes of the mult.i.tude of his followers--saint in the eyes even of many who have not accepted him as a prophet--Mr. Gandhi preaches to-day under the uninspiring name of ”Non-co-operation,” a gospel of revolt none the less formidable because it is so far mainly a gospel of negation and retrogression, of destruction not construction. Mr. Gandhi challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British rule. He has pa.s.sed judgment upon both British rule and Western civilisation, and, condemning both as ”Satanic,” his cry is away with the one and with the other, and ”back to the Vedas,” the fountain source of ancient Hinduism. That he is a power in the land none can deny, least of all since the new Viceroy, Lord Reading, almost immediately on his arrival in India, spent long hours in close conference with him at Simla. What manner of man is Mr. Gandhi, whom Indians revere as a Mahatma, _i.e._ an inspired sage upon whom the wisdom of the ancient Ris.h.i.+s has descended? What is the secret of his power?

Born in 1869 in a Gujarat district in the north of the Bombay Presidency, Mohandas Karamchamd Gandhi comes of very respectable Hindu parentage, but does not belong to one of the higher castes. His father, like others of his forebears, was Dewan, or chief administrator, of one of the small native States of Kathiawar. He himself was brought up for the Bar and, after receiving the usual English education in India, completed his studies in England, first as an undergraduate of the London University and then at the Inner Temple. His friend and biographer, Mr. H.S.L. Polak, tells us that his mother, whose religious example and influence made a lasting impression upon his character, held the most orthodox Hindu views, and only agreed to his crossing ”the Black Water” to England after exacting from him a three-fold vow, which he faithfully kept, of abstinence from flesh, alcohol, and women. He returned to India as soon as he had been called to the Bar and began to practise as an advocate before the Bombay High Court, but in 1893, as fate would have it, he was to be called to South Africa in connection with an Indian legal case in Natal. In South Africa he was brought at once into contact with a bitter conflict of rights between the European population and the Indian settlers who had originally been induced to go out and work there at the instance of the white communities who were in need of cheap labour for the development of the country. The Europeans, professing to fear the effects of a large admixture of Asiatic elements, had begun not only to restrict further Indian immigration, but to place the Indians already in South Africa under many disabilities all the more oppressive because imposed on racial grounds. Natal treated them harshly, but scarcely as harshly as the Transvaal, then still under Boer government. In the Transvaal the Imperial Government took up the cudgels for them, and the treatment of the Indian settlers there was one of the grievances pressed by Lord Milner during the negotiations which preceded the final rupture with the Boer Republics. When the South African war broke out Mr. Gandhi believed that it would lead to a generous recognition of the rights of Indians if they at once identified their cause with that of the British, and he induced Government to accept his offer of an Indian Ambulance Corps which did excellent service in the field. Mr. Gandhi himself served with it, was mentioned in despatches, and received the war medal. His health gave way, and he returned to India in 1901 where he resumed practice in Bombay with no intention of returning to South Africa, as he felt confident that when the war was over the Imperial Government would see to it that the Indians should have the benefit of the principles which it had itself proclaimed before going into the war. He was, however, induced to return in 1903 to help in preparing the Indian memorials to be laid before Mr. Chamberlain whose visit was imminent in connection with the work of reconstruction.

On his arrival he found that conditions and European opinion were becoming more instead of less unfavourable for Indians, and though in 1906, when the native rebellion broke out in Natal, he again offered and secured the acceptance of an Indian Stretcher-Bearer Corps with which he again served and received the thanks of the Governor, he gradually found himself driven into an att.i.tude of more and more open opposition and even conflict with Government by a series of measures imposing more and more intolerable restraints upon his countrymen. It was in 1906 that he first took a vow of pa.s.sive resistance to a law which he regarded as a deliberate attack upon their religion, their national honour, and their racial self-respect. In the following year he was consigned, not for the first time, to jail in Pretoria, but his indomitable att.i.tude helped to bring about a compromise. It was, however, short-lived, as misunderstandings occurred as to its interpretation. The struggle broke out afresh until another provisional settlement promised to lead to a permanent solution, when Mr. Gokhale, after consultation with the India Office during a visit to England, was induced in 1912 to proceed to South Africa and use his good offices in a cause which he had long had at heart. Whether, as Mr. Gokhale himself always contended, as a deliberate breach of the promise made to him by the princ.i.p.al Union Ministers, or as the result of a lamentable misunderstanding, measures were again taken in 1913 which led Mr. Gandhi to renew the struggle, and it a.s.sumed at once a far more serious character than ever before. It was then that Mr. Gandhi organised his big strikes of Indian labour and headed the great strikers' march of protest into the Transvaal which led to the arrest and imprisonment of the princ.i.p.al leaders and of hundreds of the rank and file. The furious indignation aroused in India, the public meetings held in all the large centres, and the protest entered by the Viceroy himself, Lord Hardinge, in his speech at Madras, combined with earnest representations from Whitehall, compelled General s.m.u.ts to enter once more the path of conciliation and compromise. As the result of a Commission of Inquiry the Indians' Relief Act was pa.s.sed, and in the correspondence between Mr. Gandhi and General s.m.u.ts the latter undertook on behalf of the South African Government to carry through other administrative reforms not actually specified in the new Act. Mr.

Gandhi returned to India just after the outbreak of the Great War, and the Government of India marked its appreciation of the great services which he had rendered to his countrymen in South Africa by recommending him for the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal, which was conferred upon him amongst the New Year honours of 1915.

The South African stage of Mr. Gandhi's career is of great importance, as it goes far to explain both the views and the methods which he afterwards applied in India. He brought back with him from South Africa a profound distrust of Western civilisation, of which he had unquestionably witnessed there some of the worst aspects, and also a strong belief in the efficacy of pa.s.sive resistance as the most peaceful means of securing the redress of all Indian grievances in India as well as in South Africa should they ever become in his opinion unendurable.

Mr. Gokhale, before he died, obtained a promise from him that for at least a year he would not attempt to give practical expression to the extreme views which he had already set forth in the proscribed pamphlet _Hind Swaraj_. At an early age Mr. Gandhi had fallen under the spell of Tolstoian philosophy, and he has admitted only quite recently that for a time he was so much impressed with the doctrines of Christ that he was inclined to adopt Christianity; but the further study of the spiritual side of Hinduism convinced him that in it alone the key of salvation could be found, and all his teachings since then have been based on his faith in the superiority of the Indian civilisation rooted in Hinduism to Western civilisation, which for him in fact represents in its present stage only a triumph of gross materialism and brute force. Nevertheless, when the Great War broke out, he was prepared to believe that the ordeal of war in the cause of freedom for which Britain had taken up arms might lead to the redemption of Western civilisation from its worst evils, and whilst in London on his way to South Africa he had already offered to form, and to enrol himself and his wife in, an Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Yet he was not blind to the flaws of the civilisation for which he stood. He conducted a temperance campaign amongst his countrymen in South Africa, and, brought there into close contact with many Indians of the ”untouchable” castes, he revolted against a system which tried to erect such insurmountable barriers between man and man.

Perhaps the best clue to the many contradictions in which his activities have continually seemed to involve him was furnished by himself when he said, ”Most religious men I have met are politicians in disguise; I, however, who wear the guise of a politician am at heart a religious man,” and the doctrine which he holds of all others to be the corner-stone of his religion is that of _Ahimsa_, which, as he has described it, ”requires deliberate self-suffering, not the deliberate injuring of the wrongdoer,” in the resistance of evil.

Throughout the war Mr. Gandhi devoted his ceaseless energies chiefly to preaching social reforms and the moral regeneration of his countrymen.

He was then an honoured guest at European gatherings, as for instance at the Madras Law dinner in 1915, at various conferences on education, at the Bombay Provincial Co-operative Conference in 1917 when in connection with the admirable Co-operative Credit movement in India he lectured on the moral basis of co-operation, at missionary meetings in which he showed his intimate familiarity with the gospels by reverently quoting Christ's words in support of his own plea for mutual forbearance and tolerance. As late as July 1918 he defined _Swaraj_ as partners.h.i.+p in the Empire, and war service as the easiest and straightest way to win _Swaraj_, inviting the people of his own Gujarat country whom he was addressing to wipe it free of the reproach of effeminacy by contributing thousands of Sepoys in response to the Viceroy's recent appeal for fresh recruits for the Indian army at one of the most critical moments during the war. His comments about the same time on the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme were by no means unfavourable, and he specifically joined in the tribute of praise bestowed upon the Indian Civil Service for their steadfast devotion to duty and great organising ability. Government itself resorted to his services as the member of a Commission appointed to inquire into agrarian troubles at Camparan, and his collaboration was warmly welcomed by his European colleagues. Nor were there any signs of implacable hostility to British rule in his vigorous protests in the following year against the anti-Asiatic legislation of the South African Union which was again stirring up bad feeling in India.

The circ.u.mstances which drove him to declare war against British rule and Western civilisation arose out of the action taken by Government on the report of the ”Sedition Committee,” which, under the presidency of Mr. Justice Rowlatt, a judge of the High Court of King's Bench, sent out especially to preside over it, had not only carefully explored the origins and growth of political crime during the great wave of unrest after the Part.i.tion of Bengal, but recommended that in some directions the hands of the executive and judicial authorities should be strengthened to cope with any fresh outbreaks of a similar character.

The Committee pointed out that in spite of the preventive legislation of 1911 it had become apparent before the war broke out that the forces of law and order were still inadequately equipped to cope with the situation in Bengal. For the duration of the war the Defence of India Act had conferred upon Government emergency powers which had enabled the authorities summarily to intern a large number of those who were known to be closely connected with the criminal propaganda, but almost as soon as the war was over their release would follow automatically upon the expiry of the Defence Act, and a dangerous situation would arise again if Government had nothing but the old methods of procedure to fall back upon.