Part 16 (1/2)

A Mahomedan gentleman, Mr. Ali Imam, has been appointed to succeed Mr.

Sinha as Indian member of the Viceroy's Executive Council. He too is a leading member of the Bengal Bar, and, like Mr. Sinha, will take charge of the Legal Department. Though the selection of a Mahomedan in succession to a Hindu cannot fail to gratify Indian Moslems, Mr. Ali Imam's appointment should not be altogether unacceptable to the Hindus.

For when the details of the reforms' scheme were being worked out in India, he adopted, on the subject of separate electorates for the Mahomedan community, a line of his own which was applauded by the Hindus, but was very much resented by the vast majority of his co-religionists. The Government of India seemed inclined to favour his proposals, and he proceeded to England to press them upon Lord Morley.

But the Secretary of State wisely decided that the pledges originally given by Lord Minto to the Indian Mahomedans must be scrupulously and fully redeemed, so as to secure to them substantial representation in the new Councils.

NOTE 16

The first Indian Member of the Bengal Executive Council is expected to be Mr. R.N. Mookerjee, a partner in the well-known Calcutta firm of Messrs. Martin and Co., to whom I have referred (page 258) as ”the one brilliant exception” amongst Western-educated Bengalees, who has achieved signal success in commerce and industry and has shown the possibility and the advantages of intelligent and business-like co-operation in those fields between Englishmen and Indians.

NOTE 17

THE WASTAGE IN INDIAN UNIVERSITIES.

The most striking feature about the number of graduates at the Indian Universities is not the magnitude of their total or any increase in it, but the very high proportion of wastage. It takes 24,000 candidates at Matriculation to secure 11,000 pa.s.ses, it takes 7,000 candidates at the Intermediate examination to secure 2,800 pa.s.ses, and it takes 4,750 candidates for the B.A. degree to secure 1,900 pa.s.ses.

There are 18,000 students at college in order to supply an annual output of 1,935 graduates. This means that a very large number fall out by the way without completing successfully their University career. The phenomenon, peculiar to India, of candidates for employment urging as a qualification that they have failed at a University examination (meaning that they have pa.s.sed the preceding examination and added thereto some years of study for the next) is due to two causes, the large number of students whom the University rejects at its examinations before it grants the B.A. degree to the remainder, and the dearth of graduates.

_(Quinquennial Report on the Progress of Education in India for_ 1902-1907, by Mr. H.W. Orange, Director-General of Education.)

NOTE 18

ENGLISH HISTORY IN INDIAN SCHOOLS.

At the opening of an Educational Conference held last April in Bombay under the joint auspices of the Director of Public Instruction and of the Teachers' a.s.sociation, the Governor, Sir George Clarke, alluded to some of the effects of Western education on the younger generation of Indians:--”It is widely admitted by the thoughtful Indians that there are signs of the weakening of parental influence, of the loss of reverence for authority, of a decadence of manners and of growing moral laxity. The restraining forces of ancient India have lost some of their power; the restraining forces of the West are inoperative in India.

There has thus been a certain moral loss without any corresponding gain.

The educated European may throw off the sanctions of religion; but he has to live in a social environment which has been built up on the basis of Christian morality, and he cannot divest himself of the influences which have formed his conscience. The educated or partially educated Indian who has learned to look on life and the affairs of men from a Western standpoint has no such environment and may find himself morally rudderless on an ocean of doubt. The restraints of ancient philosophies, which have unconsciously helped to shape the lives of millions in India who had only the dimmest knowledge of them, have disappeared from his mental horizon. There is nothing to take their place. Ancient customs, some of them salutary and enn.o.bling, have come to be regarded as obsolete. No other customs of the better sort have come to take their place, and blindly to copy the superficial customs of the West is to ignore all that is best in western civilization.”

Commenting on his Excellency's speech, the Bombay _Examiner_, a weekly paper very ably conducted in the interests of the Roman Catholic missions, drew attention, in the following terms to some of the causes of the mischief.

(1) The study of English history in schools reveals a gradual transition from an unlimited monarchy to a limited monarchy differing barely from a republic, the gradual transfer of political power from kings and aristocracy through the barons and then through the burghers and finally to the whole people. In reality this process took almost a thousand years, but in the schoolroom it is compressed into a term. The gradualness of the process, the long preparation of each cla.s.s of citizens, the slow political education of the ma.s.ses, all of which forms a long historical perspective, is through the medium of the text-book thrown upon, the screen at once as a flat picture. It may not occur perhaps to the young mind to apply the precedent to his own country; but as soon as he falls under the influence of the political agitator the question, suggests itself: If the English people thus fought their way to supremacy, why should not the Indian people do the same? Losing sight of the perspective of history, it seems to him feasible that India should achieve in one bound what it took nearly a thousand years for the English people to bring about.

(2) In studying political economy and social science he meets with such principles as these--that the ruler is merely the delegate and representative of the people, from whose will he derives all his power.

This power is to be exercised for the well-being of the people who have conferred it, and according to their will in conferring it. The old idea that all power, even that conferred through the people, is ultimately derived from G.o.d and exercised in His Name, is of course never heard of.

The ruler is a public servant of the collective nation, and that is all.

To introduce this notion among a people whose idea of government has run for thousands of years on the lines of absolute monarchy and hereditary if not divine right is nothing short of revolutionary. All idea of the sacredness of authority is at once gone. The Government is a thing to be dictated to by the people, to be threatened and bullied and even exterminated if it does not comply with the nation's wishes. Hence as soon as the political agitator appears on the scene nothing seems more plausible to the raw mind of the student than an endeavour to upset the existing order of things. This cannot, of course, all be done at once; but at least a beginning can be made. Let us agitate for the redress of this or that grievance, for the increase of native appointments, and the like; and if we do not at once get what we ask for, let us try what bullying and intimidation can do--aspiring ultimately to subst.i.tute a representative for a monarchical form of government, and having secured this, wait the opportune moment for driving the foreigner into the sea.

Thus a change which, to be successful, would require the gradual education of the people for generations, is to be forced on at once; and ”if const.i.tutional means are not sufficient to achieve our ambition, why not try what unconst.i.tutional means will do?”

NOTE 19

A SHAMELESS APPEAL.

Perhaps the most audacious defence of the enlistment by Hindu politicians of schoolboys and students in the service of a lawless propaganda occurs in an article in the _Bengalee_ of August 2, 1906, shamelessly appealing to the language of Christ. The _Bengalee_, which is published in English, is Mr. Surendranath Banerjee's organ:--

”In all great movements boys and young men play a prominent part, the divine message comes first to them; and they are persecuted and they suffer for their faith. 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me,'

are the words of the divinely-inspired Founder of Christianity; and the faith that is inseparable from childhood and youth is the faith which has built up great creeds and has diffused them through the world. Our boys and young men have been persecuted for their _Swades.h.i.+sm_; and their sufferings have made _Swades.h.i.+sm_ strong and vigorous.”