Chapter 9

New York Times:—It is quite impossible for any one possessed of imagination to close this book without feeling that it has introduced him to a movement of very great importance ... (a) fascinating book.Unity:—J. T. Sunderland, D.D. “An interesting, well written, reliable book.”Journal of Religious Psychology:—A very interesting account.Boston Transcript:—Very remarkable book.Christian Intelligence:—Fascinating in style and matter.Literary Digest:—More interesting to Americans.Outlook:—It (the Arya Samaj) deserves wide attention.Christian Work:—“Carefully thought out and selected material” framed “into well-expressed phrases.”London Times:—A remarkable book.London Daily News:—An indispensable book.London“India”:—A historic book.

Unity:—J. T. Sunderland, D.D. “An interesting, well written, reliable book.”

Journal of Religious Psychology:—A very interesting account.

Boston Transcript:—Very remarkable book.

Christian Intelligence:—Fascinating in style and matter.

Literary Digest:—More interesting to Americans.

Outlook:—It (the Arya Samaj) deserves wide attention.

Christian Work:—“Carefully thought out and selected material” framed “into well-expressed phrases.”

London Times:—A remarkable book.

London Daily News:—An indispensable book.

London“India”:—A historic book.

Very favorable reviews given by the (London) Nation, the (London) New Statesman, the Pall Mall Gazette and other English and American papers in lengthy notices.

REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN INDIA

A pamphlet, 25 cents.

To be had of the author, care of B. W. Huebsch, 225 Fifth avenue, New York.

THE STORY OF MY DEPORTATIONSecond Edition in Course of Preparation

FOOTNOTES:[1]The italics everywhere in this quotation are mine.[2]See Vincent Smith’s “Early History of India,” third edition, p. 135.[3]“Mr. Vincent Smith is always anxious to deprive India of the credit of all her achievements in art and literature.” Indian Historical Studies by Prof. H. D. G. Rawlinson, p. 227.[4]The italics in the above quotation are mine.[5]See also Mr. E. B. Havell’s Ideals of Indian Art, pp. 11-12. Mr. Havell’s conclusion is: “We may see if we have eyes to see, that all India is one in spirit, however diverse in race and in creed.”[6]First Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905.[7]See footnote to p. 5, of his “Early History of India,” 3rd ed.[8]A town on the Eastern Coast of India.[9]Some of these sentences have been reduced.[10]In 16 cases these sentences have been commuted to life-long imprisonment not out of mercy as the Viceroy has himself officially pointed out, but in consideration of the evidence.[11]The great mutiny of 1857, of which more hereafter.[12]Six of them have been sentenced to death, 45 to transportation for life, some to imprisonment and some have been acquitted.[13]The italics are mine.[14]The italics are mine.[15]Some Reflections on the Political Situation in India, by Lajpat Rai, pp. 24-27.[16]The ludicrous extent to which the prohibition to keep and use arms has been carried will be better illustrated by the following incident reported by theBengaleeof Calcutta.“A five year old boy of Munshi Ganj Road, Kidderpore, had a toy pistol purchased for one anna. On the 8th of August last the child was playing with it but could not explode the paper caps. A thirteen year lad showed him how to do it. The boy was at once arrested by a beat constable and marched off to the Wat Ganjthana with the fire arm. The boy was eventually sent up for trial at Alipur and the Court fined him three rupees.”[17]Commenting on the annual report of the issue of licenses the Indian press have made similar statements. ThePunjabeesays “while the ruffians bent on crime have been able to secure fire arms by foul means, the law abiding section of the community have for the most part continued helpless owing to the difficulties of obtaining licenses for fire arms.” See alsoBengaleeof the 6th Oct. 1915.[18]The italics are mine.[19]The italics are mine.[20]The examinations have not been discontinued but statutory provision has been made for a large proportion of the appointments formerly filled by examination to be now filled by nomination.[21]Mr. Lowes Dickinson, an English Professor who has largely travelled in India, has practically admitted the truth of this remark. (P. 23, An Essay on the Civilisation of India, China, and Japan. See also pp. 27 and 28.)[22]ThePioneerof Allahabad, a semi-official organ of the Anglo-Indians, has in a recent issue said that “The safety of the State is and must be of far greater importance than the rights of the individuals.”[23]The Western Coast.[24]Heavy wooden sticks.[25]A straw mat.[26]The italics are mine.[27]“The Raja (i.e., the king) was not above the law.” See Wilson’s note on p. 203, vol. I of Mill’s British India.[28]See Rhys David’s “Buddhist India.”[29]See an account of Yudhishthira’sRajsuya yajnain the Mahabharata.[30]For an account of Chandra Gupta’s Government see Early History of India by Mr. Vincent Smith.[31]It is true that parts of Deccan had been from time to time overrun by the Mohammedans and at least one Muslim kingdom had been founded there even before Akbar’s time, but still the general statement in the text stands good.[32]The tribal name of the House to which Partap belonged.[33]Names of Rajput ruling families in Akbar’s time.[34]The history of Europe up to the 18th century is full of parallel disputes on racial and religious grounds.[35]It is said that for a short time a small portion of Northwest India formed a province of the Empire of Darius and paid tribute to that monarch, but the government was all the same native.[36]“The Asiatic conquerors very soon abated their ferocity, because they made the conquered country their own. They rose or fell with the rise and fall of the territory they lived in. Fathers there deposited the hopes of their posterity; the children there beheld the monuments of their fathers. Here their lot was finally cast; and it is the normal wish of all that their lot should not be cast in bad land. Poverty, sterility, and desolation are not a recreating prospect to the eye of man, and there are very few who can bear to grow old among the curses of a whole people. If their passion or avarice drove the Tartar hordes to acts of rapacity or tyranny, there was time enough, even in the short life of man, to bring round the ill effects of the abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards, and domestic profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many disorders and with few political checks upon power, nature had still fair play, the sources of acquisition were not dried up, and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and usury itself operated both for the preservation and the employment of national wealth. The husbandman and manufacturer paid heavy interest, but then they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their resources were dearly bought, but they were sure, and the general stock of the community grew by the general effect.“But under the English Government all this order is reversed. The Tartar invasion was mischievous, but it is our protection that destroys India. It was their enmity, but it is our friendship. Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely know what it is to see the grey head of an Englishman; young men, boys almost, govern there, without society, and without sympathy with the natives. They have no more social habits with the people than if they still resided in England; nor, indeed, any species of intercourse but that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, wave after wave, and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.” (Edmund Burke in a speech made in the House of Commons in 1783A. D.The reflections are as good, to-day, as they were then.)[37]The constitution of the Government of India is settled by laws made by the Parliament of Great Britain, in which India is not represented.[38]See Sir Henry Cotton’s New India (1907), pp. 68, 69 and 70.[39]In England this is the view of the bulk of the Indian student community. The Government, of course, repudiates that view.[40]In this connection we may refer the reader to an excellent article published in theNew Statesman(London) dated April 1, 1916, called, “If the Germans conquered England.” With the alteration of England for Germany and India for England the article would make an excellent exposition of the position of the Indian Nationalist.[41]See New India by Sir Henry Cotton, 1907, p. 34.[42]It should be noted that the evils complained of in this chapter are the evils of the system which, in the words of John Stuart Mill, is unnatural, and the unnaturalness of which is recognised in full by many fair-minded Britishers. It was recognised so far back as 1835 by the British historian Wilson in his concluding remarks in the last chapter of his monumental History of British India.[43]The Punjab.[44]Sivaji was the founder of the Mahratta Empire in India.[45]Sirhind is a small town on the road to Delhi, where the Muslim governor of the time tortured the two minor sons of Guru Govind Singh to death by placing them between two brick walls.[46]See Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 367. “In respect to the mutineers of the 55th, they were taken fighting against us, and so far deserve little mercy. But, on full reflection, I would not put them all to death. I do not think that we should be justified in the eyes of the Almighty in doing so. A hundred and twenty men are a large number to put to death. Our object is to make an example to terrify others. I think this object would be effectually gained by destroying from a quarter to a third of them. I would select all of those against whom anything bad can be shown—such as general bad character, turbulence, prominence in disaffection or in the fight, disrespectful demeanor to their officers during the few days before the 26th, and the like. If these did not make up the required number, I would then add to them the oldest soldiers. All these should be shot or blown away from the guns, as may be most expedient. The rest I would divide into patches: some to be imprisoned ten years, some seven, some five, some three.”[47]History of Indian Mutiny, Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 203. “Martial law had been proclaimed; those terrible Acts passed by the Legislative Council in May and June were in full operation; and soldiers and civilians alike were holding Bloody Assize, or slaying natives without any Assize at all, regardless of sex or age. Afterwards the thirst for blood grew stronger still. It is on the records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the Governor General of India in Council, that the aged, women, and children, are sacrificed, as well as those guilty of rebellion. They were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their villages—perhaps now and then accidently shot. Englishmen did not hesitate to boast, or to record their boastings in writings, that they had ‘spared no one,’ and that ‘peppering away at niggers’ was very pleasant pastime, ‘enjoyed amazingly,’ It has been stated in a book patronised by high class authorities, that ‘for three months eight dead-carts daily went their rounds from sunrise to sunset to take down the corpses which hung at the cross-roads and market-places,’ and that ‘six thousand beings’ had been thus summarily disposed of and launched into eternity.”[48]See Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Mutiny, vol. II, p. 177. “Already our military officers were hunting down the criminals of all kinds, and hanging them up with as little compunction as though they had been pariah-dogs, or jackals, or vermin of a baser kind. One contemporary writer has recorded that, on the morning of disarming parade, the first thing he saw from the Mint was a ‘row of gallowses.’ A few days afterwards the military courts or commissions were sitting daily, and sentencing old and young to be hanged with indiscriminate ferocity. On one occasion, some young boys, who, seemingly in mere sport, had flaunted rebel colours and gone about beating tom-toms, were tried and sentenced to death. One of the officers composing the court, a man unsparing before an enemy under arms, but compassionate, as all brave men are, towards the weak and the helpless, went with tears in his eyes to the commanding officer, imploring him to remit the sentence passed against these juvenile offenders, but with little effect on the side of mercy. And what was done with some show of formality either of military or of criminal law, was as nothing, I fear, weighed against what was done without any formality at all. Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts, and amateur executioners were not wanting to the occasion. One gentleman boasted of the numbers he had finished off quite ‘in an artistic manner,’ with mango-trees for gibbets and elephants for drops, the victims of this wild justice being strung up, as though for pastime, in ‘the form of a figure of eight.’”On mock trials see Holmes’ History of the Sepoy War, p. 124. “Officers, as they went to sit on the court martial, swore that they would hang their prisoners, guilty or innocent.... Prisoners condemned to death after a hasty trial were mocked at and tortured by ignorant privates before their execution, while educated officers looked on and approved.” “Old men who had done us no harm, and helpless women with sucking infants at their breasts felt the weight of our vengeance, no less than the vilest malefactors.” Again see History of the Siege of Delhi quoted by Savarkar in his “War of Indian Independence,” p. 111, by an officer who served there, how, on the way from Umbala to Delhi, thousands were placed before a court martial in rows after rows and condemned to be hanged or shot. In some places cow’s flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into the mouths of the condemned. (All Hindus abhor cow’s flesh and would rather die than eat it.)See Charles Ball’s Indian Mutiny, vol. I, p. 257. “One trip I enjoyed amazingly; we got on board a steamer with a gun, while the Sikhs and the fusiliers marched up to the city. We steamed up throwing shots right and left till we got up to the bad places, when we went on the shore and peppered away with our guns, my old double-barrel bringing down several niggers. So thirsty for vengeance I was. We fired the places right and left and the flames shot up to the heavens as they spread, fanned by the breeze, showing that the day of vengeance had fallen on the treacherous villains. Every day we had expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages and we had taken our revenge. I have been appointed the chief of a commission for the trial of all natives charged with offences against the Government and persons. Day by day, we have strung up eight or ten men. We have the power of life in our hands and, I assure you, we spare not. A very summary trial is all that takes place. The condemned culprit is placed under a tree, with a rope around his neck, on the top of a carriage, and when it is pulled off he swings.”“In the Punjab, near Ajnala, in a small island, many a Sepoy who had simply fled away from a regiment which was working under the reasonable fear of being disarmed and shot by the Government for suspicion, was hiding himself. Cooper with a loyal body of troops took them prisoner. The entire number, amounting to two hundred and eighty-two, were then conveyed by Cooper to Ajnala. Then came the question what was to be done with them. There was no means of transporting them to a place where they could be tried formally. On the other hand, if they were summarily executed, other regiments and intending rebels might take warning by their fate, and thus, further bloodshed might be prevented. For these reasons, Cooper, fully conscious as he was of the enormous responsibility which he was undertaking, resolved to put them all to death. Next morning, accordingly, he brought them out in tens and made some Sikhs shoot them. In this way, two hundred and sixteen perished. But, there still remained sixty-six others who had been confined in one of the bastions of the Tahsil. Expecting resistance, Cooper ordered the door to be opened. But not a sound issued from the room; forty-five of them were dead bodies lying on the floor. For, unknown to Cooper, the windows had been closely shut and the wretched prisoners had found in the bastion a second Black-Hole. The remaining twenty-one were shot, like their comrades. 1—8—’57. For this splendid assumption of authority, Cooper was assailed by the hysterical cries of ignorant humanitarians. But Robert Montgomery unanswerably vindicated his character by proving that he had saved the Lahore division.”—Holmes’s History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 363.“It is related that, in the absence of tangible enemies, some of our soldiery, who turned out on this occasion, butchered a number of unoffending camp-followers, servants, and others who were huddling together in vague alarm, near the Christian church-yard. No loyalty, no fidelity, no patient good service on the part of these good people could extinguish, for a moment, the fierce hatred which possessed our white soldiers against all who wore the dusky livery of the East.”—Kaye and Malleson’s Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 438.[49]It should be noted that this visit took place during the present war and the observations recorded above were penned after the “unique” outburst of loyalty on the part of the Indians in connection with the Great War.[50]A native term equivalent for Europeans.[51]This is a native expression signifying the highest respect of the speaker towards one whom he considers his superior. Literally it means mother and father.[52]I. e., like the English.[53]In the interests of Lancashire goods.[54]Mr. Ilbert was the Law member of the Council of the Governor General and the bill came to be named after him.[55]Mr. Hume was an ex-secretary-of the Government of India who had retired from service.[56]Sir William Wedderburn is also a retired member of the Government of Bombay, India.[57]Sir Auckland Colvin was the Lieutenant Governor of the then North Western Provinces (now the United Province of Agra and Oudh).[58]The quotations from Hume are taken out of W. Wedderburn’s Allan Octavian Hume, the parts enclosed in parenthesis are Wedderburn’s.[59]These compliments have been renewed of late. The Congress held at Madras in 1914 was attended by the British Governor of the Presidency.[60]Mr. Hume’s biography by Sir William Wedderburn, p. 62.[61]Mr. Hume’s biography by Sir W. W., p. 63.[62]Biography, p. 63.[63]Swadeshi means country-made, and Swaraj means self-government or self-rule.[64]The Congress session held at Surat in December, 1907, ended in a split preceded by a disorderly meeting.[65]Presided over by the Honourable Mr. G. K. Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy’s Council.[66]Swadeshi means the cult of home industries,i.e., the use of the articles made in the country.[67]An eminent Bengalee writer.[68]Moreover the keynote of these organisations was association and co-operation with Government, and not independent self-assertion.[69]These are signs of mourning in India.[70]An eminent nobleman and landlord of Bengal.[71]India made goods.[72]Wholesale piece goods merchants belonging to Upper India are known in Calcutta by that name.[73]A ruling chief in the Bombay Presidency.[74]In my opinion there has never been any time in human history when religion and morals were successfully divorced from politics, either in Ancient India or anywhere else.[75]Societies, Associations and Gymnasiums.[76]A leader universally respected and loved by all classes of people throughout India.See frontispiece.[77]See Mr. H. W. Nevinson’s New Spirit in India, p. 295; also pp. 133, 233, etc.; see also Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald’s Awakening of India.[78]For an account of this split see H. W. Nevinson’s New Spirit in India, Chap. XIII.[79]A reward of one hundred thousand Rupees equal to 33,000 dollars was offered for information leading to the arrest of the culprit or culprits.[80]Name of a religious sect. See Pratts’ India and Its Faiths, p. 13.[81]The Spirit of Indian Nationalism, by Mr. B. C. Pal. p. 36.[82]A great Bengalee writer of fiction who composed the well-known nationalist song, “Bande Mataram” or Hail Motherland.[83]Or the foreign exploiters.[84]It was in the first half of the year 1908 that the first bomb was thrown at Muzaffarpur, Behar. It was meant for a Magistrate who had been passing sentences of whipping on nationalist youths, but by mistake it struck a quite innocent person. The investigation of this case resulted in the discovery of a big conspiracy. The trial of this conspiracy is known by the name “Maniktolah Bomb Case” from the fact that the headquarters of this conspiracy were alleged to have been in the Maniktolah gardens, Calcutta. One of the conspirators Narendra Nath Gossain became an approver. After the case had been committed for trial before the Sessions Court and when the approver and the accused were both lodged in jail at Alipore, one of the leaders of the conspiracy shot the approver dead with a rifle which had been smuggled into the jail premises by their friends.[85]A great Nationalist leader of Bengal, now dead.[86]One of his followers in San Francisco has told me that this description of him, viz., that he does not advocate the use of the bomb or the revolver is not correct.[87]This is illustrated in Indian official life day in and day out. It is not a rare occurrence that the British heads of the Departments get credit for what has been achieved by the genius, intelligence and labour of their Indian subordinates.[88]Indian heroes.[89]Non-commissioned officers of the native Indian army.[90]Force, energy and vitality.[91]Life of meditation and self-denial.[92]Lord Dufferin was the Governor General of India and Sir A. Colvin was the Lieutenant Governor of what were then the Northwestern Provinces, now the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.[93]The organisation of the Pro-British Muslims.[94]See the Introduction.[95]Komagata Maru is the name of a Japanese steamer, which a number of Sikh emigrants chartered in Hong Kong in 1914 a. d. in order to take them to Canada. They were not allowed to land and were forced to return to India, under circumstances which have created a bitter anti-British feeling among the Indians all over the world.[96]During her most dreadful famines hundreds of thousands of tons of foodstuffs were shipped out of India.[97]See Mill’s History of British India, Vol. VI, pp. 149, 150, Vol. VII, p. 388, and p. 393, Vol. IX, pp. 207, 209. See Bishop Heber’s description of India in 1824 quoted in Mill and Wilson’s History of India, Vol. IX, p. 376. Also that of Mr. Shore in 1833.[98]We do not mean to say that British Rule in India is responsible for the plague, but with better management of resources, i.e., better sanitation, the plague could have been prevented or eradicated sooner than has been attempted.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]The italics everywhere in this quotation are mine.

[2]See Vincent Smith’s “Early History of India,” third edition, p. 135.

[3]“Mr. Vincent Smith is always anxious to deprive India of the credit of all her achievements in art and literature.” Indian Historical Studies by Prof. H. D. G. Rawlinson, p. 227.

[4]The italics in the above quotation are mine.

[5]See also Mr. E. B. Havell’s Ideals of Indian Art, pp. 11-12. Mr. Havell’s conclusion is: “We may see if we have eyes to see, that all India is one in spirit, however diverse in race and in creed.”

[6]First Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905.

[7]See footnote to p. 5, of his “Early History of India,” 3rd ed.

[8]A town on the Eastern Coast of India.

[9]Some of these sentences have been reduced.

[10]In 16 cases these sentences have been commuted to life-long imprisonment not out of mercy as the Viceroy has himself officially pointed out, but in consideration of the evidence.

[11]The great mutiny of 1857, of which more hereafter.

[12]Six of them have been sentenced to death, 45 to transportation for life, some to imprisonment and some have been acquitted.

[13]The italics are mine.

[14]The italics are mine.

[15]Some Reflections on the Political Situation in India, by Lajpat Rai, pp. 24-27.

[16]The ludicrous extent to which the prohibition to keep and use arms has been carried will be better illustrated by the following incident reported by theBengaleeof Calcutta.“A five year old boy of Munshi Ganj Road, Kidderpore, had a toy pistol purchased for one anna. On the 8th of August last the child was playing with it but could not explode the paper caps. A thirteen year lad showed him how to do it. The boy was at once arrested by a beat constable and marched off to the Wat Ganjthana with the fire arm. The boy was eventually sent up for trial at Alipur and the Court fined him three rupees.”

[16]The ludicrous extent to which the prohibition to keep and use arms has been carried will be better illustrated by the following incident reported by theBengaleeof Calcutta.

“A five year old boy of Munshi Ganj Road, Kidderpore, had a toy pistol purchased for one anna. On the 8th of August last the child was playing with it but could not explode the paper caps. A thirteen year lad showed him how to do it. The boy was at once arrested by a beat constable and marched off to the Wat Ganjthana with the fire arm. The boy was eventually sent up for trial at Alipur and the Court fined him three rupees.”

[17]Commenting on the annual report of the issue of licenses the Indian press have made similar statements. ThePunjabeesays “while the ruffians bent on crime have been able to secure fire arms by foul means, the law abiding section of the community have for the most part continued helpless owing to the difficulties of obtaining licenses for fire arms.” See alsoBengaleeof the 6th Oct. 1915.

[18]The italics are mine.

[19]The italics are mine.

[20]The examinations have not been discontinued but statutory provision has been made for a large proportion of the appointments formerly filled by examination to be now filled by nomination.

[21]Mr. Lowes Dickinson, an English Professor who has largely travelled in India, has practically admitted the truth of this remark. (P. 23, An Essay on the Civilisation of India, China, and Japan. See also pp. 27 and 28.)

[22]ThePioneerof Allahabad, a semi-official organ of the Anglo-Indians, has in a recent issue said that “The safety of the State is and must be of far greater importance than the rights of the individuals.”

[23]The Western Coast.

[24]Heavy wooden sticks.

[25]A straw mat.

[26]The italics are mine.

[27]“The Raja (i.e., the king) was not above the law.” See Wilson’s note on p. 203, vol. I of Mill’s British India.

[28]See Rhys David’s “Buddhist India.”

[29]See an account of Yudhishthira’sRajsuya yajnain the Mahabharata.

[30]For an account of Chandra Gupta’s Government see Early History of India by Mr. Vincent Smith.

[31]It is true that parts of Deccan had been from time to time overrun by the Mohammedans and at least one Muslim kingdom had been founded there even before Akbar’s time, but still the general statement in the text stands good.

[32]The tribal name of the House to which Partap belonged.

[33]Names of Rajput ruling families in Akbar’s time.

[34]The history of Europe up to the 18th century is full of parallel disputes on racial and religious grounds.

[35]It is said that for a short time a small portion of Northwest India formed a province of the Empire of Darius and paid tribute to that monarch, but the government was all the same native.

[36]“The Asiatic conquerors very soon abated their ferocity, because they made the conquered country their own. They rose or fell with the rise and fall of the territory they lived in. Fathers there deposited the hopes of their posterity; the children there beheld the monuments of their fathers. Here their lot was finally cast; and it is the normal wish of all that their lot should not be cast in bad land. Poverty, sterility, and desolation are not a recreating prospect to the eye of man, and there are very few who can bear to grow old among the curses of a whole people. If their passion or avarice drove the Tartar hordes to acts of rapacity or tyranny, there was time enough, even in the short life of man, to bring round the ill effects of the abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards, and domestic profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored them to the people. With many disorders and with few political checks upon power, nature had still fair play, the sources of acquisition were not dried up, and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and usury itself operated both for the preservation and the employment of national wealth. The husbandman and manufacturer paid heavy interest, but then they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their resources were dearly bought, but they were sure, and the general stock of the community grew by the general effect.“But under the English Government all this order is reversed. The Tartar invasion was mischievous, but it is our protection that destroys India. It was their enmity, but it is our friendship. Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely know what it is to see the grey head of an Englishman; young men, boys almost, govern there, without society, and without sympathy with the natives. They have no more social habits with the people than if they still resided in England; nor, indeed, any species of intercourse but that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, wave after wave, and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.” (Edmund Burke in a speech made in the House of Commons in 1783A. D.The reflections are as good, to-day, as they were then.)

“But under the English Government all this order is reversed. The Tartar invasion was mischievous, but it is our protection that destroys India. It was their enmity, but it is our friendship. Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely know what it is to see the grey head of an Englishman; young men, boys almost, govern there, without society, and without sympathy with the natives. They have no more social habits with the people than if they still resided in England; nor, indeed, any species of intercourse but that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, wave after wave, and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting. Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.” (Edmund Burke in a speech made in the House of Commons in 1783A. D.The reflections are as good, to-day, as they were then.)

[37]The constitution of the Government of India is settled by laws made by the Parliament of Great Britain, in which India is not represented.

[38]See Sir Henry Cotton’s New India (1907), pp. 68, 69 and 70.

[39]In England this is the view of the bulk of the Indian student community. The Government, of course, repudiates that view.

[40]In this connection we may refer the reader to an excellent article published in theNew Statesman(London) dated April 1, 1916, called, “If the Germans conquered England.” With the alteration of England for Germany and India for England the article would make an excellent exposition of the position of the Indian Nationalist.

[41]See New India by Sir Henry Cotton, 1907, p. 34.

[42]It should be noted that the evils complained of in this chapter are the evils of the system which, in the words of John Stuart Mill, is unnatural, and the unnaturalness of which is recognised in full by many fair-minded Britishers. It was recognised so far back as 1835 by the British historian Wilson in his concluding remarks in the last chapter of his monumental History of British India.

[43]The Punjab.

[44]Sivaji was the founder of the Mahratta Empire in India.

[45]Sirhind is a small town on the road to Delhi, where the Muslim governor of the time tortured the two minor sons of Guru Govind Singh to death by placing them between two brick walls.

[46]See Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 367. “In respect to the mutineers of the 55th, they were taken fighting against us, and so far deserve little mercy. But, on full reflection, I would not put them all to death. I do not think that we should be justified in the eyes of the Almighty in doing so. A hundred and twenty men are a large number to put to death. Our object is to make an example to terrify others. I think this object would be effectually gained by destroying from a quarter to a third of them. I would select all of those against whom anything bad can be shown—such as general bad character, turbulence, prominence in disaffection or in the fight, disrespectful demeanor to their officers during the few days before the 26th, and the like. If these did not make up the required number, I would then add to them the oldest soldiers. All these should be shot or blown away from the guns, as may be most expedient. The rest I would divide into patches: some to be imprisoned ten years, some seven, some five, some three.”

[47]History of Indian Mutiny, Kaye and Malleson, vol. II, p. 203. “Martial law had been proclaimed; those terrible Acts passed by the Legislative Council in May and June were in full operation; and soldiers and civilians alike were holding Bloody Assize, or slaying natives without any Assize at all, regardless of sex or age. Afterwards the thirst for blood grew stronger still. It is on the records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the Governor General of India in Council, that the aged, women, and children, are sacrificed, as well as those guilty of rebellion. They were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their villages—perhaps now and then accidently shot. Englishmen did not hesitate to boast, or to record their boastings in writings, that they had ‘spared no one,’ and that ‘peppering away at niggers’ was very pleasant pastime, ‘enjoyed amazingly,’ It has been stated in a book patronised by high class authorities, that ‘for three months eight dead-carts daily went their rounds from sunrise to sunset to take down the corpses which hung at the cross-roads and market-places,’ and that ‘six thousand beings’ had been thus summarily disposed of and launched into eternity.”

[48]See Kaye and Malleson’s History of the Mutiny, vol. II, p. 177. “Already our military officers were hunting down the criminals of all kinds, and hanging them up with as little compunction as though they had been pariah-dogs, or jackals, or vermin of a baser kind. One contemporary writer has recorded that, on the morning of disarming parade, the first thing he saw from the Mint was a ‘row of gallowses.’ A few days afterwards the military courts or commissions were sitting daily, and sentencing old and young to be hanged with indiscriminate ferocity. On one occasion, some young boys, who, seemingly in mere sport, had flaunted rebel colours and gone about beating tom-toms, were tried and sentenced to death. One of the officers composing the court, a man unsparing before an enemy under arms, but compassionate, as all brave men are, towards the weak and the helpless, went with tears in his eyes to the commanding officer, imploring him to remit the sentence passed against these juvenile offenders, but with little effect on the side of mercy. And what was done with some show of formality either of military or of criminal law, was as nothing, I fear, weighed against what was done without any formality at all. Volunteer hanging parties went out into the districts, and amateur executioners were not wanting to the occasion. One gentleman boasted of the numbers he had finished off quite ‘in an artistic manner,’ with mango-trees for gibbets and elephants for drops, the victims of this wild justice being strung up, as though for pastime, in ‘the form of a figure of eight.’”On mock trials see Holmes’ History of the Sepoy War, p. 124. “Officers, as they went to sit on the court martial, swore that they would hang their prisoners, guilty or innocent.... Prisoners condemned to death after a hasty trial were mocked at and tortured by ignorant privates before their execution, while educated officers looked on and approved.” “Old men who had done us no harm, and helpless women with sucking infants at their breasts felt the weight of our vengeance, no less than the vilest malefactors.” Again see History of the Siege of Delhi quoted by Savarkar in his “War of Indian Independence,” p. 111, by an officer who served there, how, on the way from Umbala to Delhi, thousands were placed before a court martial in rows after rows and condemned to be hanged or shot. In some places cow’s flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into the mouths of the condemned. (All Hindus abhor cow’s flesh and would rather die than eat it.)See Charles Ball’s Indian Mutiny, vol. I, p. 257. “One trip I enjoyed amazingly; we got on board a steamer with a gun, while the Sikhs and the fusiliers marched up to the city. We steamed up throwing shots right and left till we got up to the bad places, when we went on the shore and peppered away with our guns, my old double-barrel bringing down several niggers. So thirsty for vengeance I was. We fired the places right and left and the flames shot up to the heavens as they spread, fanned by the breeze, showing that the day of vengeance had fallen on the treacherous villains. Every day we had expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages and we had taken our revenge. I have been appointed the chief of a commission for the trial of all natives charged with offences against the Government and persons. Day by day, we have strung up eight or ten men. We have the power of life in our hands and, I assure you, we spare not. A very summary trial is all that takes place. The condemned culprit is placed under a tree, with a rope around his neck, on the top of a carriage, and when it is pulled off he swings.”“In the Punjab, near Ajnala, in a small island, many a Sepoy who had simply fled away from a regiment which was working under the reasonable fear of being disarmed and shot by the Government for suspicion, was hiding himself. Cooper with a loyal body of troops took them prisoner. The entire number, amounting to two hundred and eighty-two, were then conveyed by Cooper to Ajnala. Then came the question what was to be done with them. There was no means of transporting them to a place where they could be tried formally. On the other hand, if they were summarily executed, other regiments and intending rebels might take warning by their fate, and thus, further bloodshed might be prevented. For these reasons, Cooper, fully conscious as he was of the enormous responsibility which he was undertaking, resolved to put them all to death. Next morning, accordingly, he brought them out in tens and made some Sikhs shoot them. In this way, two hundred and sixteen perished. But, there still remained sixty-six others who had been confined in one of the bastions of the Tahsil. Expecting resistance, Cooper ordered the door to be opened. But not a sound issued from the room; forty-five of them were dead bodies lying on the floor. For, unknown to Cooper, the windows had been closely shut and the wretched prisoners had found in the bastion a second Black-Hole. The remaining twenty-one were shot, like their comrades. 1—8—’57. For this splendid assumption of authority, Cooper was assailed by the hysterical cries of ignorant humanitarians. But Robert Montgomery unanswerably vindicated his character by proving that he had saved the Lahore division.”—Holmes’s History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 363.“It is related that, in the absence of tangible enemies, some of our soldiery, who turned out on this occasion, butchered a number of unoffending camp-followers, servants, and others who were huddling together in vague alarm, near the Christian church-yard. No loyalty, no fidelity, no patient good service on the part of these good people could extinguish, for a moment, the fierce hatred which possessed our white soldiers against all who wore the dusky livery of the East.”—Kaye and Malleson’s Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 438.

On mock trials see Holmes’ History of the Sepoy War, p. 124. “Officers, as they went to sit on the court martial, swore that they would hang their prisoners, guilty or innocent.... Prisoners condemned to death after a hasty trial were mocked at and tortured by ignorant privates before their execution, while educated officers looked on and approved.” “Old men who had done us no harm, and helpless women with sucking infants at their breasts felt the weight of our vengeance, no less than the vilest malefactors.” Again see History of the Siege of Delhi quoted by Savarkar in his “War of Indian Independence,” p. 111, by an officer who served there, how, on the way from Umbala to Delhi, thousands were placed before a court martial in rows after rows and condemned to be hanged or shot. In some places cow’s flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into the mouths of the condemned. (All Hindus abhor cow’s flesh and would rather die than eat it.)

See Charles Ball’s Indian Mutiny, vol. I, p. 257. “One trip I enjoyed amazingly; we got on board a steamer with a gun, while the Sikhs and the fusiliers marched up to the city. We steamed up throwing shots right and left till we got up to the bad places, when we went on the shore and peppered away with our guns, my old double-barrel bringing down several niggers. So thirsty for vengeance I was. We fired the places right and left and the flames shot up to the heavens as they spread, fanned by the breeze, showing that the day of vengeance had fallen on the treacherous villains. Every day we had expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages and we had taken our revenge. I have been appointed the chief of a commission for the trial of all natives charged with offences against the Government and persons. Day by day, we have strung up eight or ten men. We have the power of life in our hands and, I assure you, we spare not. A very summary trial is all that takes place. The condemned culprit is placed under a tree, with a rope around his neck, on the top of a carriage, and when it is pulled off he swings.”

“In the Punjab, near Ajnala, in a small island, many a Sepoy who had simply fled away from a regiment which was working under the reasonable fear of being disarmed and shot by the Government for suspicion, was hiding himself. Cooper with a loyal body of troops took them prisoner. The entire number, amounting to two hundred and eighty-two, were then conveyed by Cooper to Ajnala. Then came the question what was to be done with them. There was no means of transporting them to a place where they could be tried formally. On the other hand, if they were summarily executed, other regiments and intending rebels might take warning by their fate, and thus, further bloodshed might be prevented. For these reasons, Cooper, fully conscious as he was of the enormous responsibility which he was undertaking, resolved to put them all to death. Next morning, accordingly, he brought them out in tens and made some Sikhs shoot them. In this way, two hundred and sixteen perished. But, there still remained sixty-six others who had been confined in one of the bastions of the Tahsil. Expecting resistance, Cooper ordered the door to be opened. But not a sound issued from the room; forty-five of them were dead bodies lying on the floor. For, unknown to Cooper, the windows had been closely shut and the wretched prisoners had found in the bastion a second Black-Hole. The remaining twenty-one were shot, like their comrades. 1—8—’57. For this splendid assumption of authority, Cooper was assailed by the hysterical cries of ignorant humanitarians. But Robert Montgomery unanswerably vindicated his character by proving that he had saved the Lahore division.”—Holmes’s History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 363.

“It is related that, in the absence of tangible enemies, some of our soldiery, who turned out on this occasion, butchered a number of unoffending camp-followers, servants, and others who were huddling together in vague alarm, near the Christian church-yard. No loyalty, no fidelity, no patient good service on the part of these good people could extinguish, for a moment, the fierce hatred which possessed our white soldiers against all who wore the dusky livery of the East.”—Kaye and Malleson’s Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 438.

[49]It should be noted that this visit took place during the present war and the observations recorded above were penned after the “unique” outburst of loyalty on the part of the Indians in connection with the Great War.

[50]A native term equivalent for Europeans.

[51]This is a native expression signifying the highest respect of the speaker towards one whom he considers his superior. Literally it means mother and father.

[52]I. e., like the English.

[53]In the interests of Lancashire goods.

[54]Mr. Ilbert was the Law member of the Council of the Governor General and the bill came to be named after him.

[55]Mr. Hume was an ex-secretary-of the Government of India who had retired from service.

[56]Sir William Wedderburn is also a retired member of the Government of Bombay, India.

[57]Sir Auckland Colvin was the Lieutenant Governor of the then North Western Provinces (now the United Province of Agra and Oudh).

[58]The quotations from Hume are taken out of W. Wedderburn’s Allan Octavian Hume, the parts enclosed in parenthesis are Wedderburn’s.

[59]These compliments have been renewed of late. The Congress held at Madras in 1914 was attended by the British Governor of the Presidency.

[60]Mr. Hume’s biography by Sir William Wedderburn, p. 62.

[61]Mr. Hume’s biography by Sir W. W., p. 63.

[62]Biography, p. 63.

[63]Swadeshi means country-made, and Swaraj means self-government or self-rule.

[64]The Congress session held at Surat in December, 1907, ended in a split preceded by a disorderly meeting.

[65]Presided over by the Honourable Mr. G. K. Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy’s Council.

[66]Swadeshi means the cult of home industries,i.e., the use of the articles made in the country.

[67]An eminent Bengalee writer.

[68]Moreover the keynote of these organisations was association and co-operation with Government, and not independent self-assertion.

[69]These are signs of mourning in India.

[70]An eminent nobleman and landlord of Bengal.

[71]India made goods.

[72]Wholesale piece goods merchants belonging to Upper India are known in Calcutta by that name.

[73]A ruling chief in the Bombay Presidency.

[74]In my opinion there has never been any time in human history when religion and morals were successfully divorced from politics, either in Ancient India or anywhere else.

[75]Societies, Associations and Gymnasiums.

[76]A leader universally respected and loved by all classes of people throughout India.See frontispiece.

[77]See Mr. H. W. Nevinson’s New Spirit in India, p. 295; also pp. 133, 233, etc.; see also Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald’s Awakening of India.

[78]For an account of this split see H. W. Nevinson’s New Spirit in India, Chap. XIII.

[79]A reward of one hundred thousand Rupees equal to 33,000 dollars was offered for information leading to the arrest of the culprit or culprits.

[80]Name of a religious sect. See Pratts’ India and Its Faiths, p. 13.

[81]The Spirit of Indian Nationalism, by Mr. B. C. Pal. p. 36.

[82]A great Bengalee writer of fiction who composed the well-known nationalist song, “Bande Mataram” or Hail Motherland.

[83]Or the foreign exploiters.

[84]It was in the first half of the year 1908 that the first bomb was thrown at Muzaffarpur, Behar. It was meant for a Magistrate who had been passing sentences of whipping on nationalist youths, but by mistake it struck a quite innocent person. The investigation of this case resulted in the discovery of a big conspiracy. The trial of this conspiracy is known by the name “Maniktolah Bomb Case” from the fact that the headquarters of this conspiracy were alleged to have been in the Maniktolah gardens, Calcutta. One of the conspirators Narendra Nath Gossain became an approver. After the case had been committed for trial before the Sessions Court and when the approver and the accused were both lodged in jail at Alipore, one of the leaders of the conspiracy shot the approver dead with a rifle which had been smuggled into the jail premises by their friends.

[85]A great Nationalist leader of Bengal, now dead.

[86]One of his followers in San Francisco has told me that this description of him, viz., that he does not advocate the use of the bomb or the revolver is not correct.

[87]This is illustrated in Indian official life day in and day out. It is not a rare occurrence that the British heads of the Departments get credit for what has been achieved by the genius, intelligence and labour of their Indian subordinates.

[88]Indian heroes.

[89]Non-commissioned officers of the native Indian army.

[90]Force, energy and vitality.

[91]Life of meditation and self-denial.

[92]Lord Dufferin was the Governor General of India and Sir A. Colvin was the Lieutenant Governor of what were then the Northwestern Provinces, now the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.

[93]The organisation of the Pro-British Muslims.

[94]See the Introduction.

[95]Komagata Maru is the name of a Japanese steamer, which a number of Sikh emigrants chartered in Hong Kong in 1914 a. d. in order to take them to Canada. They were not allowed to land and were forced to return to India, under circumstances which have created a bitter anti-British feeling among the Indians all over the world.

[96]During her most dreadful famines hundreds of thousands of tons of foodstuffs were shipped out of India.

[97]See Mill’s History of British India, Vol. VI, pp. 149, 150, Vol. VII, p. 388, and p. 393, Vol. IX, pp. 207, 209. See Bishop Heber’s description of India in 1824 quoted in Mill and Wilson’s History of India, Vol. IX, p. 376. Also that of Mr. Shore in 1833.

[98]We do not mean to say that British Rule in India is responsible for the plague, but with better management of resources, i.e., better sanitation, the plague could have been prevented or eradicated sooner than has been attempted.

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