INTRODUCTION

“Having regard to the arbitrary character of the provisions of the Press Act of 1910 and the manner in which it has been enforced in the case of several newspapers, and recently in the case ofNew India, thereby causing public dissatisfaction and discontent, this Council is of opinion that a representation should be submitted to the Government by the Association pointing out the oppressive character of the Act and its administration and asking for its appeal. The Council, therefore, resolves, that a committee consisting of Sir Narayan Chandavarkar, Messrs. B. G. Horniman, D. N. Bahadurji, A. M. Jinnah and the Honorary Secretaries be appointed to draft a memorial for the purpose and submit it to the Council within a fortnight.”

Political Crime in Bengal.In Bengal there has been no falling off in the activities of the Revolutionaryparty in spite of the fact that the powers taken by the Government under the Defence of India Act have been ruthlessly exercised. The following extracts taken from a press comment on the Resolution of the Government of Bengal relating to the working of the Police Department in 1915 may be of some interest in this connection:

“The Resolution of the Bengal Government on the Report of the Police administration in the Presidency for 1915 says that the criminal record of the year was a black one. Serious crime of all kinds except rioting showed considerable increase, which was most marked in the case of offences against property. True cases of dacoity increased from 289 in 1914 to 643 in 1915, burglary cases from 30,294 to 39,812 and theft cases from 17,730 to 31,552. The increase in theft and burglary may be ascribed mainly to the unfavourable economic conditions caused by partial crop failures in many districts of the province and by a heavy fall in the price of jute. In the case of dacoity, however, there appears to be good reason for attributing the increase almost entirely to the state of unrest caused by the war.“Referring to revolutionary crime in Bengal the resolution says: The outbreak of revolutionary crime in the early part of the year was followed by a lull after the introduction of the Defence of India Act in April. The latter part of the year was, however, marked by renewed activity on the part of the revolutionary party and the total number of cases believed to be connected with the movement was 36 as compared with 12 in the previous year. These cases included 34 dacoities, 2 attempted dacoities, 9 murders and one attempted bomb outrage.“With regard to the circulation of seditious literature, the report of the Inspector General of Police says: Increased activity in the circulation of seditious leaflets came to notice about June and continued throughout the year. Under the existing law mere possession of seditious matter is not an offence and consequently there are no means of checking the serious evil at the fountain head. It is only after the seditious and inflammatory matter has been circulated and mischief done that the law can be put in motion. There is convincing evidence that the revolutionary party in Bengal depend largely upon seditious literature to recruit their ranks and several youths have confessed that they were drawn into the movement through reading leaflets issued by the revolutionists. Penalising the possession of seditious matter may not be a complete cure for the evil, but it will materially assist to check it.”

“Referring to revolutionary crime in Bengal the resolution says: The outbreak of revolutionary crime in the early part of the year was followed by a lull after the introduction of the Defence of India Act in April. The latter part of the year was, however, marked by renewed activity on the part of the revolutionary party and the total number of cases believed to be connected with the movement was 36 as compared with 12 in the previous year. These cases included 34 dacoities, 2 attempted dacoities, 9 murders and one attempted bomb outrage.

“With regard to the circulation of seditious literature, the report of the Inspector General of Police says: Increased activity in the circulation of seditious leaflets came to notice about June and continued throughout the year. Under the existing law mere possession of seditious matter is not an offence and consequently there are no means of checking the serious evil at the fountain head. It is only after the seditious and inflammatory matter has been circulated and mischief done that the law can be put in motion. There is convincing evidence that the revolutionary party in Bengal depend largely upon seditious literature to recruit their ranks and several youths have confessed that they were drawn into the movement through reading leaflets issued by the revolutionists. Penalising the possession of seditious matter may not be a complete cure for the evil, but it will materially assist to check it.”

As recently as December 11, 1916, the Governor laid renewed emphasis upon the continued existence of serious political crime in Bengal and of their failure to check or extirpate it.

Since then a new ordinance has been promulgated making the mere possession of seditious literature penal.

In the Punjabthe Government prosecuted a third batch of persons on charges of political conspiracy, six of whom have since been sentenced to death and the others to varying terms of imprisonment and transportation.

The united demand for autonomy.The most significant political event of the year, however, is the presentation to the Viceroy of a joint memorandum of post-war reforms signed by nineteen out oftwenty-two elected members of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council. In the opinion of the signatories this is the minimum which will satisfy Indian public opinionfor the present. The demands are not far-reaching enough on the way to autonomy but the document is remarkable as a symbol of unity between the different religious communities and castes of the Indian population, on the so-called lack of which the British Imperialist so much relies, in justification of denying self-government to India. Coming from men of varying shades of political opinion, pledged by their oath of allegiance to loyalty to the British Government and by their connection with the latter, the document is the most conclusive and scathing condemnation of the existing system of Government in India. We make no apology for giving the document in full.

Memorandumsubmitted to H. E., the Viceroy, by the undersigned elected Additional Members of the Imperial Legislative Council with regard to Post-War reforms.There is no doubt that the termination of the war will see a great advance in the ideals of government all over the civilised world and especially in the British Empire, which entered into the struggle in defence of the liberties of weak and small nationalities and is pouring forth its richest blood and treasure in upholding the cause of justice and humanity in the international relations of the world. India has borne her part in this struggle and cannot remain unaffected by the new spirit of change for a better state of things. Expectations have been raised in this country andhopes held out that, after the war, the problems of Indian Administration will be looked at from a new angle of vision. The people of India have good reasons to be grateful to England for the great progress in her material resources and the widening of her intellectual and political outlook under British rule, and for the steady, if slow, advance in her national life commencing with the Charter Act of India of 1833. Up to 1909, the Government of India was conducted by a bureaucracy almost entirely non-Indian in its composition and not responsible to the people of India. The reforms of 1909 for the first time introduced an Indian element in the direction of affairs in the administration of India. This element was of a very limited character. The Indian people accepted it as an indication on the part of the Government of a desire to admit the Indians into the inner counsels of the Indian Empire. So far as the Legislative Councils are concerned, the number of non-official members was merely enlarged with increased facilities for debate and interpellation. The Supreme Legislative Council retained an absolute official majority, and in the Provincial Legislative Councils, where a non-official majority was allowed, such majority included nominated members and the European representatives. In measures largely affecting the people, whether of legislation or taxation, by which Europeans were not directly affected, the European members would naturally support the Government, and the nominated members, being nominees of Government, would be inclined to take the same side. Past experience has shown that this has actually happened on various occasions. The non-official majorities, therefore, in the Provincial Councils have proved largely illusory and give no real power to the representatives of the people. The Legislative Councils, whether Supreme or Provincial, are at present nothing but advisory bodies without any power of effective control over the Government, Imperial or Provincial. The people or their representatives are practically as little associated with the real government of the country as they were before the reforms, except for the introduction of the Indian element in the Executive Councils, where again the nomination rests entirely with the Government, the people having no voice in the selection of the Indian members.The object which the Government had in view in introducing the reforms of 1909 was, as expressed by the Prime Minister in his speech in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Indian Councils Bill (1st April, 1909), that “it was most desirable in the circumstances to give to the people of India the feeling that these Legislative Councils are not mere automatons the wires of which are pulled by the official hierarchy.” This object, it is submitted, has not been attained. Apart from this question of the Constitution of the Legislative and Executive Councils, the people labour under certain grave disabilities, which not only prevent the utilisation, but also lead to the wastage, of what is best in them, and are positively derogatory to their sense of national self-respect. The Arms Act which excludes from its operation Europeans and Anglo-Indians and applies only to the pure natives of the country, the disqualification of Indians for forming or joining Volunteer corps, and their exclusion from the commissioned ranks of the Army, are disabilities which are looked upon with an irritating sense of racial differentiation. It would be bad enough if these were mere disabilities. Restrictions and prohibitions regarding the possessionand use of arms have tended to emasculate the civil populations in India and expose them to serious danger. The position of Indians in India is practically this, that they have no real part or share in the direction of the government of the country, and are placed under very great and galling disabilities from which the other members of the British Empire are exempt and which have reduced them to a state of utter helplessness. The existence, moreover, of the system of indentured emigration gives to the British Colonies and the outside world the impression that Indians, as a whole, are no better than indentured coolies, who are looked upon as very little, if at all, above the slave. The present state of things makes the Indians feel that, though theoretically they are equal subjects of the King, they hold a very inferior position in the British Empire. Other Asiatic races also hold the same, if not a worse, view about India and her status in the Empire. Humiliating as this position of inferiority is to the Indian mind, it is almost unbearable to the youth of India whose outlook is broadened by education and travel in foreign parts where they come in contact with other free races.In the face of these grievances and disabilities, what has sustained the people is the hope and faith inspired by promises and assurances of fair and equal treatment which have been held out from time to time by our Sovereigns and British statesmen of high standing. In the crisis we are now going through, the Indian people have sunk domestic differences between themselves and the Government and have faithfully and loyally stood by the Empire. The Indian soldiers were eager to go to the battlefields of Europe, not as mercenary troops but as free citizens of the British Empire which required their services, and her civilianpopulation was animated by one desire, namely, to stand by England in the hour of her need. Peace and tranquillity reigned throughout India when she was practically denuded of British and Indian troops. The Prime Minister of England, while voicing the sentiments of the English people in regard to India’s part in this great war, spoke of Indians as “the joint and equal custodians of one common interest and future.” India does not claim any reward for her loyalty, but she has a right to expect that the want of confidence on the part of the Government, to which she not unnaturally ascribes her present state, should now be a thing of the past and that she should no longer occupy a position of subordination but one of comradeship. This would assure the Indian people that England is ready and willing to help them to attain self-government under the ægis of the British Crown, and thus discharge the noble mission which she has undertaken and to which she has so often given voluntary expression through her rulers and statesmen. What is wanted is not merely good government or efficient administration, but government that is acceptable to the people because it is responsible to them. This is what India understands would constitute the changed angle of vision.If, after the termination of the war, the position of India practically remains what it was before, and there is no material change in it, it will undoubtedly cause bitter disappointment and great discontent in the country, and the beneficent effects of participation in common danger, overcome by common effort will soon disappear, leaving no record behind save the painful memory of unrealised expectations. We feel sure that the Government is also alive to the situation and is contemplating measures of reform in the administrationof the country. We feel that we should avail ourselves of this opportunity to respectfully offer to Government our humble suggestions as to the lines on which reforms should proceed. They must, in our opinion, go to the root of the matter. They must give to the people real and effective participation in the government of the country, and also remove those irritating disabilities as regards the possession of arms and a military career, which indicate want of confidence in the people and place them in a position of inferiority and helplessness. With this view, we would take the liberty to suggest the following measures for consideration and adoption:1. In all the Executive Councils, Provincial and Imperial, half the number of members should be Indians; the European element in the Executive Councils should, as far as possible, be nominated from the ranks of men trained and educated in the public life of England, so that India may have the benefit of a wider outlook and larger experience of the outside world. It is not absolutely essential that the members of the Executive Councils, Indians or Europeans, should have experience of actual administration, for, as in the case of Ministers in England, the assistance of the permanent officials of the departments is always available to them. As regards Indians, we venture to say that a sufficient number of qualified Indians, who can worthily fill the office of members of the Executive Council and hold portfolios, is always available. Our short experience in this direction has shown how Indians like Sir S. P. Sinha, Sir Syed Ali Imam, the late Mr. Krishnaswami Iyer, Sir Shams-ul-Huda and Sir Sankaran Nair have maintained a high level of administrative ability in the discharge of their duties. Moreover, it is well known that the Native States,where Indians have opportunities, have produced renowned administrators like Sir Salar Jang, Sir T. Madhava Rao, Sir Sheshadri Ayer, Dewan Bahadur Raghunath Rao, not to mention the present administrators in the various Native States of India. The statutory obligation, now existing, that three of the members of the Supreme Executive Council shall be selected from the public services in India and similar provisions with regard to Provincial Councils should be removed. The elected representatives of the people should have a voice in the selection of the Indian members of the Executive Councils and for that purpose a principle of election should be adopted.2. All the Legislative Councils in India should have a substantial majority of elected representatives. These representatives, we feel sure, will watch and safeguard the interests of the masses and the agricultural population, with whom they are in closer touch than any European officer, however sympathetic, can possibly be. The proceedings of the various Legislative Councils and the Indian National Congress and the Moslem League bear ample testimony to the solicitude of the educated Indians for the welfare of the masses and their acquaintance with their wants and wishes. The franchise should be broadened and extended directly to the people, Mohammedans or Hindus, wherever they are in a minority, being given proper and adequate representation, having regard to their numerical strength and position.3. The total number of the members of the Supreme Council should be not less than 150, and of the Provincial Councils not less than 100 for the major provinces, and not less than 60 to 75 for the minor provinces.4. The Budget should be passed in the shape ofmoney bills, fiscal autonomy being conceded to India.5. The Imperial Legislative Council should have power to legislate on, and discuss and pass resolutions relating to, all matters of Indian administration, and the Provincial Councils should have similar powers with regard to Provincial administrations, save and except that the direction of military affairs, of foreign relations, declarations of war, the making of peace, and the entering into treaties, other than commercial, should be vested in the Government of India. As a safeguard, the Governor-General-in-Council or the Governor-in-Council, as the case may be, should have the right of veto, which, however, should be exercised subject to certain conditions and limitations.6. The Council of the Secretary of State should be abolished. The Secretary of State should, as far as possible, hold in relation to the Government of India a position similar to that which the Secretary of State for the Colonies holds in relation to the Colonies. The Secretary of State should be assisted by two permanent Under-Secretaries, one of whom should be an Indian. The salaries of the Secretary and the Under-Secretaries should be placed on the British estimates.7. In any scheme of Imperial Federation, India should be given through her chosen representatives a place similar to that of the self-governing dominions.8. The Provincial Governments should be made autonomous, as stated in the Government of India’s despatch dated 25th August, 1911.9. The United Provinces, as well as the other major provinces should have a Governor brought from the United Kingdom and should have an Executive Council.10. A full measure of local self-government should be immediately granted.11. The right to carry arms should be granted to Indians on the same conditions as to Europeans.12. Indians should be allowed to enlist as volunteers and units of a territorial army established in India.13. Commissions in the Army should be given to Indian youths under conditions similar to those applicable to Europeans.Manindra ChandraNandy of Kasimbazar.D.E. Wacha.Bhupendranath Basu.Bishan Dutt Shukul.Madan Mohan Malaviya.K. V. Rangaswamiengar.Mazharul Haque.V. S. Srinivasan.Tej Bahadur Sapru.Ibrahim Rahimtoola.B. Narasimheswara Sarma.Mir Asad Ali.Kamini Kumar Chanda.Krishna Sahay.R. N. Bhanja Deo of Kanika.M. B. Dadabhoy.Sita Nath Roy.Mohamed Ali Mohamed.M. A. Jinnah.

Memorandumsubmitted to H. E., the Viceroy, by the undersigned elected Additional Members of the Imperial Legislative Council with regard to Post-War reforms.

There is no doubt that the termination of the war will see a great advance in the ideals of government all over the civilised world and especially in the British Empire, which entered into the struggle in defence of the liberties of weak and small nationalities and is pouring forth its richest blood and treasure in upholding the cause of justice and humanity in the international relations of the world. India has borne her part in this struggle and cannot remain unaffected by the new spirit of change for a better state of things. Expectations have been raised in this country andhopes held out that, after the war, the problems of Indian Administration will be looked at from a new angle of vision. The people of India have good reasons to be grateful to England for the great progress in her material resources and the widening of her intellectual and political outlook under British rule, and for the steady, if slow, advance in her national life commencing with the Charter Act of India of 1833. Up to 1909, the Government of India was conducted by a bureaucracy almost entirely non-Indian in its composition and not responsible to the people of India. The reforms of 1909 for the first time introduced an Indian element in the direction of affairs in the administration of India. This element was of a very limited character. The Indian people accepted it as an indication on the part of the Government of a desire to admit the Indians into the inner counsels of the Indian Empire. So far as the Legislative Councils are concerned, the number of non-official members was merely enlarged with increased facilities for debate and interpellation. The Supreme Legislative Council retained an absolute official majority, and in the Provincial Legislative Councils, where a non-official majority was allowed, such majority included nominated members and the European representatives. In measures largely affecting the people, whether of legislation or taxation, by which Europeans were not directly affected, the European members would naturally support the Government, and the nominated members, being nominees of Government, would be inclined to take the same side. Past experience has shown that this has actually happened on various occasions. The non-official majorities, therefore, in the Provincial Councils have proved largely illusory and give no real power to the representatives of the people. The Legislative Councils, whether Supreme or Provincial, are at present nothing but advisory bodies without any power of effective control over the Government, Imperial or Provincial. The people or their representatives are practically as little associated with the real government of the country as they were before the reforms, except for the introduction of the Indian element in the Executive Councils, where again the nomination rests entirely with the Government, the people having no voice in the selection of the Indian members.

The object which the Government had in view in introducing the reforms of 1909 was, as expressed by the Prime Minister in his speech in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Indian Councils Bill (1st April, 1909), that “it was most desirable in the circumstances to give to the people of India the feeling that these Legislative Councils are not mere automatons the wires of which are pulled by the official hierarchy.” This object, it is submitted, has not been attained. Apart from this question of the Constitution of the Legislative and Executive Councils, the people labour under certain grave disabilities, which not only prevent the utilisation, but also lead to the wastage, of what is best in them, and are positively derogatory to their sense of national self-respect. The Arms Act which excludes from its operation Europeans and Anglo-Indians and applies only to the pure natives of the country, the disqualification of Indians for forming or joining Volunteer corps, and their exclusion from the commissioned ranks of the Army, are disabilities which are looked upon with an irritating sense of racial differentiation. It would be bad enough if these were mere disabilities. Restrictions and prohibitions regarding the possessionand use of arms have tended to emasculate the civil populations in India and expose them to serious danger. The position of Indians in India is practically this, that they have no real part or share in the direction of the government of the country, and are placed under very great and galling disabilities from which the other members of the British Empire are exempt and which have reduced them to a state of utter helplessness. The existence, moreover, of the system of indentured emigration gives to the British Colonies and the outside world the impression that Indians, as a whole, are no better than indentured coolies, who are looked upon as very little, if at all, above the slave. The present state of things makes the Indians feel that, though theoretically they are equal subjects of the King, they hold a very inferior position in the British Empire. Other Asiatic races also hold the same, if not a worse, view about India and her status in the Empire. Humiliating as this position of inferiority is to the Indian mind, it is almost unbearable to the youth of India whose outlook is broadened by education and travel in foreign parts where they come in contact with other free races.

In the face of these grievances and disabilities, what has sustained the people is the hope and faith inspired by promises and assurances of fair and equal treatment which have been held out from time to time by our Sovereigns and British statesmen of high standing. In the crisis we are now going through, the Indian people have sunk domestic differences between themselves and the Government and have faithfully and loyally stood by the Empire. The Indian soldiers were eager to go to the battlefields of Europe, not as mercenary troops but as free citizens of the British Empire which required their services, and her civilianpopulation was animated by one desire, namely, to stand by England in the hour of her need. Peace and tranquillity reigned throughout India when she was practically denuded of British and Indian troops. The Prime Minister of England, while voicing the sentiments of the English people in regard to India’s part in this great war, spoke of Indians as “the joint and equal custodians of one common interest and future.” India does not claim any reward for her loyalty, but she has a right to expect that the want of confidence on the part of the Government, to which she not unnaturally ascribes her present state, should now be a thing of the past and that she should no longer occupy a position of subordination but one of comradeship. This would assure the Indian people that England is ready and willing to help them to attain self-government under the ægis of the British Crown, and thus discharge the noble mission which she has undertaken and to which she has so often given voluntary expression through her rulers and statesmen. What is wanted is not merely good government or efficient administration, but government that is acceptable to the people because it is responsible to them. This is what India understands would constitute the changed angle of vision.

If, after the termination of the war, the position of India practically remains what it was before, and there is no material change in it, it will undoubtedly cause bitter disappointment and great discontent in the country, and the beneficent effects of participation in common danger, overcome by common effort will soon disappear, leaving no record behind save the painful memory of unrealised expectations. We feel sure that the Government is also alive to the situation and is contemplating measures of reform in the administrationof the country. We feel that we should avail ourselves of this opportunity to respectfully offer to Government our humble suggestions as to the lines on which reforms should proceed. They must, in our opinion, go to the root of the matter. They must give to the people real and effective participation in the government of the country, and also remove those irritating disabilities as regards the possession of arms and a military career, which indicate want of confidence in the people and place them in a position of inferiority and helplessness. With this view, we would take the liberty to suggest the following measures for consideration and adoption:

1. In all the Executive Councils, Provincial and Imperial, half the number of members should be Indians; the European element in the Executive Councils should, as far as possible, be nominated from the ranks of men trained and educated in the public life of England, so that India may have the benefit of a wider outlook and larger experience of the outside world. It is not absolutely essential that the members of the Executive Councils, Indians or Europeans, should have experience of actual administration, for, as in the case of Ministers in England, the assistance of the permanent officials of the departments is always available to them. As regards Indians, we venture to say that a sufficient number of qualified Indians, who can worthily fill the office of members of the Executive Council and hold portfolios, is always available. Our short experience in this direction has shown how Indians like Sir S. P. Sinha, Sir Syed Ali Imam, the late Mr. Krishnaswami Iyer, Sir Shams-ul-Huda and Sir Sankaran Nair have maintained a high level of administrative ability in the discharge of their duties. Moreover, it is well known that the Native States,where Indians have opportunities, have produced renowned administrators like Sir Salar Jang, Sir T. Madhava Rao, Sir Sheshadri Ayer, Dewan Bahadur Raghunath Rao, not to mention the present administrators in the various Native States of India. The statutory obligation, now existing, that three of the members of the Supreme Executive Council shall be selected from the public services in India and similar provisions with regard to Provincial Councils should be removed. The elected representatives of the people should have a voice in the selection of the Indian members of the Executive Councils and for that purpose a principle of election should be adopted.

2. All the Legislative Councils in India should have a substantial majority of elected representatives. These representatives, we feel sure, will watch and safeguard the interests of the masses and the agricultural population, with whom they are in closer touch than any European officer, however sympathetic, can possibly be. The proceedings of the various Legislative Councils and the Indian National Congress and the Moslem League bear ample testimony to the solicitude of the educated Indians for the welfare of the masses and their acquaintance with their wants and wishes. The franchise should be broadened and extended directly to the people, Mohammedans or Hindus, wherever they are in a minority, being given proper and adequate representation, having regard to their numerical strength and position.

3. The total number of the members of the Supreme Council should be not less than 150, and of the Provincial Councils not less than 100 for the major provinces, and not less than 60 to 75 for the minor provinces.

4. The Budget should be passed in the shape ofmoney bills, fiscal autonomy being conceded to India.

5. The Imperial Legislative Council should have power to legislate on, and discuss and pass resolutions relating to, all matters of Indian administration, and the Provincial Councils should have similar powers with regard to Provincial administrations, save and except that the direction of military affairs, of foreign relations, declarations of war, the making of peace, and the entering into treaties, other than commercial, should be vested in the Government of India. As a safeguard, the Governor-General-in-Council or the Governor-in-Council, as the case may be, should have the right of veto, which, however, should be exercised subject to certain conditions and limitations.

6. The Council of the Secretary of State should be abolished. The Secretary of State should, as far as possible, hold in relation to the Government of India a position similar to that which the Secretary of State for the Colonies holds in relation to the Colonies. The Secretary of State should be assisted by two permanent Under-Secretaries, one of whom should be an Indian. The salaries of the Secretary and the Under-Secretaries should be placed on the British estimates.

7. In any scheme of Imperial Federation, India should be given through her chosen representatives a place similar to that of the self-governing dominions.

8. The Provincial Governments should be made autonomous, as stated in the Government of India’s despatch dated 25th August, 1911.

9. The United Provinces, as well as the other major provinces should have a Governor brought from the United Kingdom and should have an Executive Council.

10. A full measure of local self-government should be immediately granted.

11. The right to carry arms should be granted to Indians on the same conditions as to Europeans.

12. Indians should be allowed to enlist as volunteers and units of a territorial army established in India.

13. Commissions in the Army should be given to Indian youths under conditions similar to those applicable to Europeans.

It might be noted that the demands are extremely moderate and accompanied by rather exaggerated acknowledgments of the effects of British rule in India. They proceed from a body of professed loyalists. They have received wide support from representative organisations of Hindus and Mahommedans as well as from representative men of all classes, castes and denominations.

India in England.In England the exigencies of the war have left no time for the British Parliament to devote to the meagre discussions of Indian affairsthat followed the presentation of East India accounts once a year. The requirements of the law in this respect have been conveniently ignored. In the press too, while every expression of loyalty is lauded to the skies and even cabled to America, the demands for rights and reforms are silently ignored or hooted with contempt. The reactionary Lord Sydenham has, however, sounded a note of alarm urging the “immediate and final” rejection of the demands made by the nineteen members of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council. The LondonNationand theNew Statesmanhave come out with sympathetic articles.

India in America.Here in the United States of America the attention paid to Indian affairs by the American press, has elicited long statements by British statesmen in connection with their rule in India. The Secretary of State for India, the Under Secretary of State for India, the Viceroy, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, the Finance Minister have all granted interviews to American correspondents, assuring the latter of the marvellous progress India is making under British rule, of the prosperity and loyalty of India and of the extreme unimportance of the Nationalist party. Judged from these interviews India must be a very paradise on earth—a garden of Eden. Most of the statements are vague and misleading, containing half truths and suppressing important facts. I will pick up one statement for purposes of illustration. The Finance Minister of India is reported to have said:

“So far from the people of India groaning under an enormous burden of taxation India is one of the most lightly taxed countries on the face of the earth.... The total Revenue, Imperial and Provincial, for the current year amounted to £86,500,000 and this sum distributed among the 244,000,000 people of British India gave a resultant contribution per capita of only seven shillings.”

Now at best this is only a half truth. The Finance Minister should have added that the total income of India is about £600,000,000 a year, bringing the average per capita to £2 a year. Seven shillings out of £2 a year is perhaps the heaviest tax paid by any country on the face of the earth. Equally misleading are other statements about land tax, etc., which I am noticing in my new book dealing with Economic Effects of British Rule in India which is going to the press soon.

The writer is also establishing a kind of Bureau in New York, where all kinds of information, political, economic, legal, commercial, etc., relating to India will be supplied to the American public.

Lajpat Rai.

New York,

19th January, 1917.

P. S. Since the above was written the newspapers have reported that the British Government have decided to raise a war loan of $500,000,000 in India as a “free gift” to Great Britain. Free gift, indeed! Where the donor and the donee are thesame—a free gift by a people vast numbers of whom do not get two meals a day and have an average income of ten dollars a year. Imperialism, wonderful are thy feats!!!

Note: TheManchester Guardian, March 13, 1917, comments as follows upon the war loan mentioned in the above P. S., the italics being mine:“Why was this question of a financial contribution from India raised now?For our own part we have the gravest doubt as to the wisdom or justice of taking any financial contribution from India.We believe that this is not the best way for India and for the Empire, in which India can serve the common cause, andthat the loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of India is very much greater than the gain it represents to England. If we really are seriously concerned that India ‘should develop in every way the vast potentialities of her indigenous products’ it would be better to spend 100 millions [£] on developing her resources than to take that money from India and in exchange give Bombay a tariff.”

Note: TheManchester Guardian, March 13, 1917, comments as follows upon the war loan mentioned in the above P. S., the italics being mine:

“Why was this question of a financial contribution from India raised now?For our own part we have the gravest doubt as to the wisdom or justice of taking any financial contribution from India.We believe that this is not the best way for India and for the Empire, in which India can serve the common cause, andthat the loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of India is very much greater than the gain it represents to England. If we really are seriously concerned that India ‘should develop in every way the vast potentialities of her indigenous products’ it would be better to spend 100 millions [£] on developing her resources than to take that money from India and in exchange give Bombay a tariff.”

Lajpat Rai.

18th March, 1917.

DURINGmy travels in the world, the one point that has struck me most forcibly and most painfully, is the lack of true knowledge about the affairs of India among the “civilised” nations of the globe. Even the best educated among them know very little about India and what little they know is not always right. The sources from which the ordinary stay-at-home Westerner derives his knowledge about India are the following: (a) missionaries who have been to India, (b) English writers of the class of Rudyard Kipling and Sir Valentine Chirol, (c) British officials, (d) serious students of Indian history or Indian literature like the late Professor Max Müller, the late Miss Noble, and the late Professor Goldstucker.

Now unfortunately for India most of these people, except those coming under the last heading, have generally an axe to grind and can not be accepted as disinterested, well-informed, impartial authorities. Their reading of Indian history is often perverted and their observations of Indian life partial and distorted. They go to India with definite aims, look at persons and things from their own particular angle, and pose as authorities on matters far beyond the scope of their observations andstudies. With rare exceptions most of the Westerners who go to India go with the presumption that the people of India belong to an inferior level of society; that they are heathens, worshippers of stocks and stones; that they are hopelessly divided into castes and classes; that these castes and classes are always at each other’s throats; that they have never had a settled or civilised form of government; that the British have for the first time in their history given them a settled government; and that India would go to pieces if British government were to withdraw.

Writers about India may again be broadly subdivided into two classes: (a) those of British origin, (b) those of non-British origin. Those of British origin are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred tainted with the imperial bias. They can only look at things from the imperial or British point of view. Even the best and the most fair-minded of them do not altogether succeed in freeing themselves from this bias. The bias acts even against their will. The second class of writers are affected by the racial and the colour bias. Moreover, nine out of ten amongst them are made to look at things from the British point of view. As soon as they land at an Indian port, they are taken in hand by the British residents, officials and non-officials, and practically the whole of their trip is arranged for them by the latter. They only see things which the ruling community want them to see and they only hear and know what these allow them to hear or know. The few who resolutely refuse to be thus “programmed”do sometimes see things in their true light, as the late Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., and Mr. H. W. Nevinson did.

In this connection I think the following remarks of the latest American writer on India, Professor Pratt of Williams College, Massachusetts, in his book on “India and Its Faiths” are very pertinent. Professor Pratt begins by warning the reader against “the point of view of the native” himself, as well as against “those European writers who seek to give an ultra ‘sympathetic’ picture of India.” But his observations about the other two of the four sources of information mentioned by him are extremely interesting. He says:

“Much greater is the danger that we, with our Western ideals and customs so different from those of India, should go to the other extreme and take one of the two remaining points of view that I referred to above. One of these is that which characterises a certain type (now happily decreasing) of earnest but narrow-minded missionary.” The fourth source of information, which, according to Professor Pratt, “one should regard with distrust,” comprises “the superficial tourist or the non-missionary European resident in India.” In his opinion this source is particularly dangerous, for “it is so natural to suppose that one of our own race who has travelled in India (and especially one who has lived there ‘twenty-two years’) will be in a position to know all about it.... The tourist’s ignorance is not surprising, but it is not easy to understand the ignorance of the average European residentin India.” Professor Pratt’s remarks about the “average European resident,” who has been “twenty-two years” in India, are prefaced by an eulogistic tribute to the British administration of justice in India, which may be accepted with a little salt. The administration of justice in India is impartial and as fair as it can be under the circumstances, except when one party is a native and the other a Britisher. What concerns us here, is Professor Pratt’s opinion about the resident Englishman’s knowledge of India. In his opinion “most of the Englishmen” whom he met seemed to him “singularly lacking in curiosity or interest” about “Indian thought, religion, traditions and ways of viewing things.” “The Anglo-Indian,” adds he, “is surprisingly indifferent towards almost everything native.” Professor Pratt illustrates his conclusions by actual facts which came under his observation. One English gentleman who had lived in Calcutta and other parts of the East for many years, said to the professor: “The natives are all just a lot of animals, don’t you think so?” No wonder that the professor had to say that his impression was quite different. For him it was hard to conceive how one “could stay any time among them without finding them a truly lovable people, and without imbibing genuine respect and admiration for the simple dignity of their lives, the quiet courtesy of their manners, their uncomplaining endurance of hardships, their unbounded hospitality, and the feeling for spiritual value, which in spite of gross superstitions is unmistakable in the Indianatmosphere.” Professor Pratt’s “Englishman” had never heard of a Dr. Bose, “one of the greatest botanists living,” and he did “not think much” of Tagore’s poetry. “This lack of interest in native life as such,” continues Mr. Pratt, “and the proud manifestation of conscious superiority that goes with it, shows itself in the coarser naturesin a contempt for the ‘black man’and ‘a constant swagger of putting him in his place.’ As a result of this indifference to andcontempt for the natives, most of the Anglo-Indians that I know anything about are very ignorant concerning the religions of India, anddecidedly prejudiced against them. Personally I think that the opinions of nine Englishmen out of ten on the subject of Indian religions areentirely untrustworthy.”[1]

Professor Pratt only speaks of the English residents’ ignorance of Indian religion, but I am disposed to add that the opinions of ninety-nine out of every hundred Anglo-Indians on the nature and effects of British rule in India and the capacity of Indians to manage their own affairs are equally “untrustworthy.” Hence the colossal ignorance which prevails in the West about what is happening in India politically and economically. Just think of an honest, fair-minded British writer, like Lowes Dickinson, presuming to write about political life in India without discussing the economic effects of British rule.

India being only a dependency, her affairs do not attract that attention which they would if she werea self-governing country. The British Parliament disposes of the Indian affairs by an annual discussion of a few hours in an extremely thin house. The last time the British House of Commons discussed an important measure affecting India, viz.: one by which it was proposed to suspend the Indian Civil Service examination pending the war and to authorise the Secretary of State in Council to make appointments by nomination, the maximum attendance, it is said, never exceeded 28. This measure was condemned by the unanimous voice of the Indian native press, yet there was nobody in the House to give expression to their views in the matter. The author, himself, has attended the sittings of the House in different years, when the India budget was underdiscussionand can testify from personal knowledge that the attendance wasalwaysvery scanty and the speeches, often, poor.

Yet the fact that India is inhabited by about one-fifth of the whole human race and that her trading capacity is simply unlimited, entitles her to a fuller consideration at the hands of the civilised world. Leaving aside her past, it can not be doubted that she is destined to play a great part in the development of the near future. As such, the writer has presumed that the following brief account of the rise and development of the Indian Nationalist Movement may not be devoid of interest to British and American readers. The book is of course open to the objection that it is written by a “native,” but in the eyes of impartial investigators that should be its merit. The writer has been closely associatedwith the movement for the last thirty-three years of his life, in almost all its phases, religious, social, educational, industrial and political. It was in 1888 that he joined the Indian National Congress, the official organisation of the “constitutional” nationalists, i.e., only four years after it was started.

In the following pages he has tried to give as faithful an account of the origin and progress of the movement as is possible under the circumstances. The one fact which qualifies him to interpret the Indian Nationalist Movement is that his position has always been more or less detached. He has generally had the confidence of all sections as far as the broad outlines of their policy were concerned, without identifying himself with each and every item of their respective programmes. Whenever occasionally or incidentally he has happened to know of any projected violence, without exception he has used his influence toward restraint. By a timely exercise of his influence he once (1908) succeeded in saving the lives of one Lieutenant Governor and one College Principal. The conduct of the British in India and their denial of the fundamental rights of the people, however, continue to add fuel to the fire and make it impossible for the friends of the constitutional movement to stop or effectually check the employment of physical force. Personally the writer is disposed to agree with the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, who said the other day, that open rebellion was morally less heinous than a campaign of underhand violence bybombs and revolvers; but what the Lieutenant Governor forgot to notice was that open rebellion by a subject people must always, in the nature of things, be preceded by secret propaganda and secret preparations. Secret preparations in a country like India, access to which is on all sides controlled by the British, are bound to bring in the use of explosives and the taking of measures which might paralyse the administration and weaken its hold on the people. If a Government muzzles its people, shuts out all open avenues of political propaganda, denies them the use of firearms and otherwise stands in the way of a free agitation for political changes, it is doubtful if it can reasonably complain of secret plots and secret propaganda as distinguished from open rebellion.

The American press has of late been giving out different versions of the political situation in India. One version affirms that India is on the point of rebellion; the other that India is devotedly loyal. Both statements are partially true and both are partially false. India is not devotedly loyal, yet to all appearances she is so. Nor is India on the verge of rebellion, though she is full of rebellious spirit. It is preposterous to contend that her expressions of loyalty on the outbreak of the war are proof that she is satisfied with British rule as it is. The anti-British movement is spreading and gaining strength every day, and it is impossible for the British Government without the aid of the Indian people to uproot what the British are pleased to characterise as “Anarchism.”

Among other criticisms, to which this book may be subjected, I anticipate one or two on historical grounds which I would like to answer beforehand. It may be said that I have painted the early history of India as “a golden age”; that my references to Chandra Gupta and Asoka show only the bright side of the shield and that I have throughout assumed that India is, and has always been, a political unity. Now in considering this criticism, it should be borne in mind that my sole object in referring to the past history of India is to show to my reader that India was not a barbarous country when the British obtained possession of her, that she has had a long and in some respects a glorious history; that she was never before governed by foreigners from without in the political and economic interests of a nation not living within her territorial limits, as she has been and is being governed under the British. Whatever may be my personal opinions about ancient India and her civilisation, I have sufficient knowledge of the Occident to understand that the Western reader is liable to have some hesitancy about accepting them in all cases as historical truths. I have therefore carefully avoided making any statements for which I can not cite good authority. The statements made may be roughly divided into three kinds: (1) those relating to pre-Buddhist India, (2) those relating to India of 500B. C.to about 1000A. D., (3) those relating to India of Mohammedan domination.

Now, as regards the first, we have no strictly historical data and the statements are based on the contents of the literature of the period, viz., the religious treatises, the law books of the Hindus, and the epics. There is enough in this mass of literature to justify the modest statements made in the first chapter of this book about that period of Indian history, and, if necessary, I would be able to quote good authority for every statement made by me. Coming to the next period, viz., from 500B. C.to 1000A. D., we have enough historical data in the writings of the Greeks, the Chinese and the Mohammedans to justify the general statements made. It may be that my statements about this period are not complete, but that is because I am not writing a history of the period. I am only making an incidental reference for the purposes of this volume. For these purposes it is not necessary to trace the origin of Chandra Gupta’s rule, or to state his motives for instituting a department of commerce or a department of vital statistics. Chandra Gupta himself may have been a “villain,” but there is ample historical data for an historian like Vincent Smith[2]—a retired Indian Civil Servant by no means partial to India[3]—to conclude that “the foregoing review of the civil and the military system of government during the reign of Chandra Gupta proves clearly that Northern India in the time of Alexander theGreat had attained to a high degree of civilisationwhich must have been the product of evolution continued through many centuries.”[4]

As for Asoka, Vincent Smith has discredited the stories of his having been guilty of excesses ascribed to his early career by other historians. In any case, all historians are unanimous about the excellence of his administration. “The lofty moral tone of these edicts” (i.e., Asoka’s edicts), says Rawlinson (page 27 of “Indian Historical Studies”), “indicates clearly enough that India in the third centuryB. C.was a highly civilised country; it must, indeed, have compared favourably with the rest of the world of the time; for Greece was sinking fast into a state of corrupt decadence, and Rome, in the throes of her struggle with Carthage, had scarcely yet emerged from barbarism.” No Indian need make any higher claim than this for the India of the third centuryB. C.Finally, as about the political unity of India in the past, let it be noted that I do not claim that India wasalwaysunited under one political authority or even under one political system. At the same time it is equally untrue that India was never a political unity. Most of the British writers are disposed to deny that there has been or is any kind of unity in India. This may be disposed of by the following quotation from Vincent Smith’s “Early History of India” (page 5): “India, encircled as she is by seas and mountains, is indisputably a geographical unit, and, as such, is rightly designated by one name. Her type ofcivilisation, too, has many features which differentiate it from that of all other regions of the world, while they are common to the whole country, or rather sub-continent, in a degree sufficient to justify its treatment as a unity in the history of the social, religious and intellectual development of mankind.”[5]He adds, however, that “thecompletepolitical unity of India under the control of a permanent power, wielding unquestioned authority, is a thing of yesterday, barely a century old. The most notable of her rulers in the olden time cherished the ambition of universal Indian dominion, and severally attained it in a greater or lesser degree; not one of them, however, attained it completely.” The point admits of great controversy and anything like a proper discussion would add to the bulk of this book so much as would be out of proportion to its bearing on the main subject. Mr. Vincent Smith admits that Asoka’s Empire included the whole of India proper except a tiny bit of the Southern peninsula lying between Nellore and Cape Comorin. (See map of Asoka’s Empire in his history, between pages 162-163.) The exclusion of this bit is based not on any positive evidence that this part was not included within his empire, but on the absence of positive evidence to the contrary. It is as if men living two thousand years after our day should expect it to be proved to their satisfactionby positive documentary evidence that every bit of India was included in the British Empire under Queen Victoria. Again, the fact that Asoka’s Empire did not include the Southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula was more than compensated by the inclusion of almost the whole of Afghanistan and Beluchistan and Nepal in his dominions. The territories comprising the kingdom of Nepal are not included in the British Empire, although they constitute a necessary part of India. Yet even Vincent Smith does not doubt that India is a political unity to-day.

Then again it is only very recently that he and other historians have found out the data for a history of the Gupta Empire from 320 to 455A. D., about the extent of which he says:

“The dominions under the direct government of Samundra Gupta in the middle of the fourth century thus comprised all the populous and fertile countries of Northern India.... Beyond those wide limits the frontier kingdoms of Assam and the Gangetic delta as well as those on the southern slopes of the Himalayas and the free tribes of Malwa and Rajputana were attached to the Empire by bonds of subordinate alliance; while almost all the kingdoms of the South had been overrun by the Emperor’s armies and compelled to acknowledge his irresistible might.

“Whatever may have been the exact degree of skill attained by Samundra Gupta in the practice of the arts which graced his scanty leisure, it is clearthat he was endowed with no ordinary powers; and that he was in fact a man of genius, who may fairly claim the title of the Indian Napoleon.

“By a strange irony of fate this great king—warrior, poet, and musician—who conquered nearly all India, and whose alliances extended from the Oxus to Ceylon—was unknown even by name to the historians until the publication of this work.[6]His lost fame has been slowly recovered by the minute and laborious study of inscriptions and coins during the last eighty years.”

It may be mentioned, in passing, that monarchs of the Samundra Gupta type, who may be compared easily with a Charlemagne, a Frederick or a Peter the Great, have flourished in India almost every second generation. Hindu folk-lore has known them as Vikramadityas (Suns of Power) and has invested their names with “the halo of Arthurian romance.” And this was a time in the history of the world when Egypt and Babylon had already passed away, when China was in a state of “anarchy,” when the Roman Empire was under the heels of the barbarians, and when the Saracenic Empire (Caliphate) had not yet come into existence. England, France and Germany were simplynon est.

Now, the history of India before 1000A. D.has not yet been completely constructed, and who knows but that by future researches some other Samundra Guptas may be discovered? But in any case, the point is not so very important. In that sense even now, India may not be called a complete politicalunity. It was not so in 1830A. D.Up till 1849 the Punjab was independent and so were the other provinces annexed by Lord Dalhousie. So Vincent Smith’s claim, that it has been so since 1818A. D.[7]is not well founded. What is more important for our purpose is the present and the future. It is claimed that under the British, India is a political unity though Nepal is still independent.

The critics of Indian aspirations are very unfair, when they compare the India of the seventeenth or the eighteenth or even of the nineteenth century with Great Britain, Germany, France and United States of the twentieth. They forget that the political nations known by these names are only the growth of yesterday. India is as big as the whole of Europe excluding Russia. Yet what was Europe before the nineteenth century? It was a big camp of warring nations and warring religions, engaged in exterminating and persecuting each other alternately. India was more or less a political unity when Great Britain was smarting under the heels of the Romans. It took the British over 1600 years to establish their present political unity. Compare the following account of “England under foreign rule” (1013-1204), given by Green in his “Short History of the English People,” with the condition of things in India from the time of Samundra Gupta onwards.

“Britain had become England in the five hundred years that followed the landing of Hengest, and itsconquest had ended in the settlement of its conquerors.... But whatever titles kings might assume, or however imposing their rule might appear, Northumbrian remained apart from West Saxon, Dane from Englishman.

“Through the two hundred years that lie between the flight of Aethelred from England to Normandy and that of John from Normandy to England our story is a story of foreign rule. Kings from Denmark were succeeded by kings from Normandy, and these by kings from Anjou. Under Dane, Norman, or Angevin, Englishmen were a subject race, conquered and ruled by foreign masters; and yet it was in these years of subjection that England first became really England.... The English Lords themselves sank into a middle class as they were pushed from their place by a foreign baronage who settled on English soil.”

“In 800A. D.,” says Mr. West, in his modern history, revised edition, page 4, “Europe was still sunk deep in the barbarism that followed the long anarchy of the invasions, and the brief revival of Charlemagne had not gone far toward restoring civilisation. Schools and learning were almost extinct; commerce hardly existed; communication between district and district was almost impossible; money was so scarce that revenue had to be collected in produce; and manners and morals were alike deplorable.” There has been hardly any period in the history of India about which anything so disparaging can be said. Again says Mr. West, “From 814 to about 1100, Europe had three centuriesof ‘Dark Ages,’ caused by a new series of barbarian invasions and continued by ‘feudal’ violence of the local military organisation that society adopted to ward off these invasions.” In fact Europe was in constant war right up to 1870, and the idea of nationhood had not developed till late in the nineteenth century. It is then not right to taunt the Indians with the absence of a perfected nationality in their country. Yet it can not be denied that the idea of nationhood is being developed pretty fast in India, even on modern lines. In fact I maintain that fundamentally India has been a nation for the last 2000 years, in spite of the fact that at times it has been divided into several kingdoms and principalities, sometimes under a common empire and in other times independent of each other.

But even if the worst happens and India is split up into a number of political units, what then? To me this does not appear to be so appalling as it may seem to others. Some Indians think that in any case it is better to bemenfighting their own battles than to be merecreaturesalways in the leading strings of others. They have no faith in “peace at any price” or in “peace under any circumstances.”

This book was written when I was travelling in the United States from January to May, 1915. It was ready for the press in June, 1915. Its publication has been delayed by causes which need not be stated.

Since then much has happened in India which bears upon the subject and might briefly be referred to here.

Early in 1915 something like organised anarchy and disorder broke out in the Southwestern districts of the Punjab, resulting in the free looting of many villages in several districts. This lawlessness was due to war. It is said that the police and the officers were overtaken by panic and order was not restored until strong measures were taken from the headquarters. About 4000 persons were arrested in connection with these disturbances and some 800 of them were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, the rest being acquitted for want of evidence.

Towards the end of 1914 and in the first few months of 1915 the Punjab was the scene of many dacoities and murders, committed by and under the inspiration of Indians who had returned to India from abroad to take advantage of the war situation for political purposes. Some of these persons had gone from Canada; some from China; and some from the Pacific Coast of the United States. Amongst them were a large number of those who had been refused admission into Canada by the Canadian authorities and who had suffered enormously by their trip to Canada and back. The first clash between the latter and the Government took place at Budge Budge,[8]in Bengal, where the returned emigrants from Canada landed in order to proceed to their homes in the Punjab. The Governmentwanted to restrict their freedom of movement and would not let them go to Calcutta, whither a number of them wanted to proceed. These persons had concealed arms in their possession, and it appears that there was a free fight between them and the police, resulting in fatal casualties on both sides. About this time or a little later, the Government of India passed a special law, authorising officials to intern or imprison any person or persons in British India without trial, on mere suspicion of his or their being dangerous to the tranquillity of the country. Under this law they began to intern a large number of those who had returned from Canada and the United States and other places outside India, until the number reached to thousands. Most of them, perhaps, were kept only under surveillance. Yet a good many of them managed to put themselves into communication with the revolutionary party in India and eventually organised a “widespread conspiracy” to subvert British rule. The Government discovered this conspiracy by means of spies, who entered into the designs of the conspirators as “agents provocateurs.” It appears from the evidence subsequently given before the special tribunal appointed to try those who were arrested in connection with this conspiracy, that their plans were laid out on a comprehensive scale, with everything organised in a perfect way; that full provision had been made for finances as well as arms, and that the army had been approached with more or less success at different places in Northern India. At first a batchof about 65 were placed for trial before the special tribunal consisting of two English judges and one Indian. This tribunal was formed under the special law referred to above, and its decision was to be final in the sense that no appeal could be made from it to any other superior court. The tribunal eventually found that the conspiracy was seditious in its nature, and but for its timely discovery would have resulted in “widespread disaster.” The proceedings of the tribunal were not open to the public nor to the press. A brief report of the proceedings was issued from day to day under the authority of the tribunal. Some of the accused could not be found. Out of the 61 charged, only 4 were acquitted, 6 were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, 27 to transportation for life,[9]and 24 to death.[10]Commenting on this trial, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab observed in the course of a speech made in the Punjab Legislative Council held on September 25, 1915, that “these crimes did all over the Central Punjab from November, 1914, to July, 1915, create a state not only of alarm and insecurity, but of terror and even panic, and if they had not been promptly checked by the firm hand of authority and the active co-operation of the people, would have produced in the province as was intended by the conspirators a state of affairs similar to that of Hindustan in the mutiny[11]—paralysisof authority, widespread terrorism and murder not only of the officers of the Government but of loyal and well disposed subjects.” What is significant is, that the leader, Rash Behari Bose, a Bengalee, who had organised several such conspiracies, escaped. Commenting upon the same trial, theTimes of India, an influential Anglo-Indian paper published in Bombay, remarked:

“If this conspiracy had been disclosed in ordinary times there might have been a tendency to regard the members as representative of a considerable class of India ... but, as it is, the revolutionary party stands out a mere fraction of the population, a dangerous and determined section of the population perhaps, yet so small that it can not command any chance of success while the sentiment of the country remains what it has been so splendidly proved to be.”

Commenting upon the severity of the sentences inflicted, the Indian press took occasion to point out the grievous wrongs under which the country suffered at the hands of the British. After the conclusion of this case, over 100 persons more were indicted at Lahore[12]and a large number at Benares, in connection with the same conspiracy. Besides, a number of men belonging to the military were tried and convicted in different stations in Northern India.

In Bengal political crime was rampant in a virulentform throughout 1915. The Bengalee revolutionaries have kept the Government pretty busy all along the line, murdering police officials, looting treasuries, and committing dacoities, sometimes under the very nose of the police in the heart of the metropolis, resulting occasionally in so-called pitched battles between the police and the revolutionaries. Numberless trials have been going on in special tribunals constituted under the Defense of India Act, as well as in the ordinary courts. Large numbers of persons have been punished and equally large numbers are still undergoing trial.

There was a serious rising in Singapore, which was eventually put down with the help of the Japanese and French troops, and in connection with which a good many European lives were lost. Similarly, men smuggling arms and seditious literature, or attempting to smuggle arms, or otherwise carrying on anti-British propaganda, have been discovered, arrested and held in Burma, Singapore, Hongkong, Shanghai and Ceylon. A large number of Indians are in internment in Hongkong. Two Indian revolutionaries were deported from Japan, at the instance of the British Government, and several have been, I hear, interned in Java by the orders of the Dutch Government. Har Dayal and several others have been active in Europe and Asia Minor. The Hindu revolutionaries in the United States have also been busy in their propaganda. It is said that the Germans have been helping the Indians with funds and arms. How far they did render any substantial help in this matter is notknown, but the conclusion of the Lahore Special Tribunal, that it was known to the leaders of the “Gadar” party in San Francisco in 1914, that a war between the British and Germans was on thetapisin August of that year, appears to be without foundation. The Indians who left the United States in 1914 to organise a rebellion in India, were neither financed nor otherwise inspired by the Germans. They went of their own accord, with their own money and on their own hook. Some of them were men of means. It may be true, however, that the Germans have helped the Indian revolutionaries with money and arms since. So much about the revolutionaries.

Now something about the activity of the other wing of the Indian nationalists. When the war started, all of them declared for England, some sincerely, others for reasons of expediency. All were influenced by hopes of advancing their cause. For a time the appreciation in England—in and out of Parliament—amply justified their expectations. The first shock came when the British War Office refused to accept the offers of the Indian students in British universities to enlist in the army or as volunteers. The same fate met the offers of educated Indians in India. The offers made by some native princes and in a few cases by other members of the aristocracy for personal service were accepted, otherwise no relaxation in favour of any Indian was made in the rules for enlistment in theregular army or in the volunteers. The following extracts from the two leading Indian dailies of Calcutta and Allahabad will explain what I mean. TheBengaleeof Calcutta said:

“When the war suddenly broke out in Europe there was a great outburst of feeling in India to serve the Empire in any capacity. There was a widespread desire among the more ardent spirits in this country to fight in defence of the Empire, and in Bengal, at any rate, there was an eager rush to enlist as volunteers. These young men were willing to cast aside their attitude of aloofness from what was primarily England’s concern. They set before themselves a new ideal, the ideal of national self-realisation. By their participation in this struggle they felt they would be fighting the battles of their own freedom. It was the highest tribute the Government could expect from the people of this country of their loyalty and devotion to the throne. But the chill air of official scepticism nipped the scheme in the bud. We were told at the time not to embarrass the Government in any way; but we still lived in hopes that some means might be devised which would enable our young men to participate in this struggle so that from comradeship in arms there might arise comradeship in life leading to the necessary elevation of our status in the Empire. But a bureaucracy, with its instinctive disregard of others’ feelings and interests, not only threw cold water on this salutary scheme but applied its mind to forging new fetters of repression. Thus the Defense of the Realm Act came to bepassed, which is far more drastic and stringent than the similar statute in England. Internments have since become the order of the day. The whole thing offers a painful illustration of the psychology of the bureaucratic mind in its endeavour to breed loyalty and prevent disaffection. For while the spontaneous offer of our people, which was the outcome of a generous impulse and of genuine sentiments of loyalty and devotion, has been refused, fresh doses of repression are being applied to the wound thus inflicted on the minds of the people. But the crisis is not yet over, nor has the rising tide of feeling in this country completely subsided. There is a demand for men, always for more men, at the front. It seems we can not have too many men or too much of munitions if we desire a crushing victory. All the factories of England—and every available factory has been utilised for the manufacture of munitions of war—are working at top speed for the production of powder and shells for cannon. As regards men, volunteers are pouring forth from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the mother country itself, in fact from all parts of the British Empire, except India. Can any one say why this invidious distinction is yet maintained? Why, while gifts of every sort from us are gladly accepted, the most precious gift of all, that of personal service with all the attendant risk that it implies, continues to be so unwelcome? Lord Kitchener is still calling for men. Mr. Bonar Law’s recent speech at Shrewsbury indicates that even conscription may have to be resorted to. Whynot then accept the offers of our men? The regular troops in the fighting line have earned no end of praise from the highest authorities for the display of their martial qualities. The Ambulance Corps shows the latest potentialities in our young men that are capable of development under proper guidance and training. We have not the slightest doubt that our volunteers would prove themselves equally fit and capable, no matter what the duties they are called upon to discharge. This war is said to be a war of democracy against militarism and autocracy, a holy war of justice and righteousness against the violation of international morality and the independence of small nations. Are these assertions strictly consistent with the refusal of our loyal offer, which also amounts to a denial of our equality of status with the rest of the Empire? If, during the heat of the war and in the midst of the crisis, there be yet observed and maintained this patent inequality of treatment and this assertion of racial superiority, how can we expect that they will be altogether forgotten or cast aside after the war when the readjustment comes to be made? Repression, we repeat for the hundredth time, is a disintegrating force. It alienates sympathies, destroys union and throws people into camps. Co-operation on the other hand is a healing and a cementing principle. But without equality of treatment there can not be any co-operation, and without co-operation there can not be any prospect of permanent peace. By accepting our offer the Government may give an earnest of future reforms and concessions. It willsensibly ease and improve the situation both here and at the front. But bureaucracy has so far failed to realise the situation and avail itself of the opportunity. Let not the words ‘too late’ be written by the future historian, regarding the action of the bureaucracy in this chapter of the history of India.... India wants equality of status with the rest of the Empire, and as a means to this end her sons want to fight as volunteers in this war; and if what Burke has said be true of Englishmen, neither the one nor the other of India’s claims can be justly denied to her.”

In its issue of September 8, 1915, theLeader, of Allahabad, said:

“The not unkindly critics of John Bull have often remarked that he has got a stolid temperament and an unemotional nature. The occasions are few and far between when he allows himself to be swayed by any strong outburst of passion. One such exception to this general course of conduct was furnished last year at the outbreak of the war.... When Lord Hardinge wired to England the message of India, her ungrudging and whole-hearted response to the call of the hour, its announcement in the House of Commons touched the deepest chords in the hearts of Englishmen. Then, for once, they let themselves go. There was almost a storm of English emotion. Even theTimesthought that it foreshadowed a great change in the relations of India and England. ‘Asiaticus’ joined the chorus and swelled the pæan of the praise of Indian loyalty. He recanted his words of formerdays. He even praised Mr. Tilak. Mr. Roberts spoke of a change in the angle of vision. Other statesmen and other papers uttered the same language of joy and hope. All this naturally raised the hopes of India. Some, more imaginative than others, conjured up visions of glory. They imagined they could see the distant gleam of self-government. Others again, with a less imaginative nature, thought that even if self-government was still a far-off dream, they might yet see better days. The landing of Indian troops on the European soil was the signal for the outburst of another demonstration of feeling. Their heroic deeds, their unquestioning devotion to duty, formed the theme of sketch writers and leader writers in the English press. And yet to any one who has closely followed the course of events during the last six or seven months and studied the writings of the English press and the utterances of notable Englishmen in England and India, nothing is more clear than that an ominous reserve has again overtaken the English mind. Mr. Bonar Law talks of a consultation with the colonies, and forgets the very existence of India. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, since the day he assumed his office, has put a seal on his lips, and, whatever may flow beneath the surface from Downing Street to Delhi or Simla, nothing has fallen from his lips that can inspire confidence or kindle hope. The House of Lords have already given their reply to a sympathetic Viceroy, when, in the name of avoiding controversial issues, theyshelved the question of an Executive Council for these provinces, which is another way of saying that they strangled it. Lord Curzon, Lord MacDonnel and Lord Sydenham are not likely to learn the wisdom which the force of events would teach to more plastic minds. If Indian students in England approach the higher authorities with a prayer that they may be admitted to the Officer’s Training Corps, they are told to wait—indefinitely. If Sir George Scott Robertson, with imprudent enthusiasm, suggests the creation of an Indian guard, he is roundly told that he is impatient. ‘Asiaticus’ has again frankly gone back upon his short-lived liberalism, and Sir Valentine Chirol is no better. Convenience suggests the postponement of discussion of the Indian Budget, and the statute allows it. Out here in India the doctrine of unconditional loyalty is held up to us. We are told that it is a folly, if not a crime, to talk of what may come to India when the time for readjustment comes. Meanwhile Indian speculation, so natural to a nation of speculators, is roaming free. Hopes spring up only to give place to fears....

“There are not wanting men among us also who have only one counsel to give, and that is, wait and see. No doubt the virtues of patience are great, but we think that so far as patience alone is concerned India may easily throw out a challenge to any nation in the world. If India will not help herself she will have little reason to grumble if others will not help her. Let us distinctly tell Englandthat the time for half measures and gingerly reform has gone and that for bold and courageous steps has come.”

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