THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID INDIA OF TO-DAY INDIA OF TO-DAY BY E. C. MEYSEY-THOMPSON, M.P. ft WITH A MAP LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE '9*3 Att rights reserved PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. I CANNOT let this book go to press without offering my most cordial and hearty thanks to the friend (he will recognise himself) who has spared no pains to check my statements and statistics, and for whose able assistance I am under an infinite debt of gratitude. E. C. M. T. December, 1913. CONTENTS CHAPTER PACK I. INTRODUCTORY AND DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR ... 1 II. STRIKING CONTRASTS DENSITY OF POPULATION LANGUAGES AND CASTE HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS . . 81 III. INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE PROVISION AGAINST FAMINE EFFICIENCY, ENERGY, AND INTEGRITY .... 94 IV. GREAT PREPONDERANCE OF RURAL OVER URBAN POPULA- TION INDIAN VILLAGES EFFECT ON LEGISLATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS GROWTH OF INDUS- TRIES RAPID INCREASE OF POPULATION . . .117 V. THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 124 VI. LAND REVENUE 139 VII. TAXATION " DRAIN OF WEALTH " THEORY PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN BENGAL AND ITS EFFECTS GENERAL PROSPERITY 165 VIII. EDUCATION POLICY 181 IX. SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 198 X. POLITICAL REFORMS 214 INDEX ... 227 INDIA OF TO-DAY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY AND DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR THE last few years have seen a revival of interest in India and in our British administration of the great Indian dominions of the King-Emperor, unequalled in intensity since the dreadful days of the Mutiny. Fortified by the universal eulogy of travellers, strong in the consciousness of their own benevolence, reliant upon the evidence of material prosperity and mental growth amongst the inhabitants of the proudest of their possessions, the British public had been satisfied with tran- quillity and had reposed in security. But this tranquillity was disturbed by a series of outrages culminating in political assassinations and by conspiracy and disturbance in several Indian districts. Meanwhile the administration was attacked not merely in the native press but also by publicists of a more prominent and respectable type, including several retired officials. Legis- lation intended to improve the Indian Universities was met by a chorus of studied indignation from i B 2 INDIA OF TO-DAY one party ; while an administrative measure of importance for the* partition of the overgrown province of Bengal was made the occasion for repeated demonstrations of discontent and dis- affection. We were told that the wealth of India had been and was being drained by England : that our rule was oppressive and the main cause of impoverishment : that India lay crushed and bleeding under the heel of a soulless bureaucracy. Yet at the first glance it appeared not improbable that such discontent as existed might well have been brought about by other circumstances : that an administration for so many years admittedly beneficent, which in any case was pure and disin- terested in intention, could hardly become suddenly malevolent or tyrannical. The recent outbreaks were of a kind that might readily be regarded as a natural accident of wide dominion. ^Reflection suggested that where alien peoples of every level of civilization and of every race and history are grouped under an external necessarily uniform rule, some occasional disturbances, some local manifestations of aversion must be expected. The remedies suggested for the discontent appeared no less open to the suspicion of interested or political bias and prejudice. For when we asked whether there was a remedy to hand, we were told, in the vaguest of gener- alities, to introduce the blessings of represen- tation, to move towards democracy, and to DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 3 give the Indian peoples to eat of the raw fruit of Western Liberalism and of radical immature experiment. These were statements, these were pretensions, which could not be passed without scrutiny and investigation. It was mainly with a view to the study of those questions that I undertook my tour through India. I desired to gather on the spot material on which to essay, however tenta- tively, a judgment of what the results of fifty years of Crown rule in India had been, what the real causes of the recent outbreaks were, and whether a remedy for the evils which had led to them lay in the steadfast application of firm and just administration or in the introduction of some still nebulous system of self-government. And a moment when the unification and consolidation of the Empire was, as it still is, the most important problem in the political arena, when the whole of Britain across the seas looks with expectation for the consolidation of the Imperial system, by a Central Council on a common commercial basis, appeared the most opportune imaginable for the consideration of the system by which we govern the Indian continent. Before touching upon contentious matter, it is essential to devote some time and effort to the comprehension of what is included in the name India, and of the form which our Indian Govern- ment now takes. It will be necessary also to 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY make some attempt to grasp what our adminis- tration in India has. achieved and what are the conditions of Indian life at the present time. I propose, therefore, to commence by a short description of the tour actually undertaken by my wife and myself. Unavoidably short though it be, the mere description may serve to present some picture of the profound diversity and infinite variety which divide region from region, race from race, throughout the countries which we group under the collective name of India. I well remember the day when we arrived at Bombay in the early morning, and drove out to the delightful suburb of Malabar Hill, where I was received with hearty cordiality by my cousin Mrs. Donald Graham and her husband, who occupied a charming house in this most breezy and healthy locality. It was indeed a day to remember, that first drive in India, and greatly were we impressed by the brilliant colouring which we passed through, everything, including the bright hues of the natives' dress, being lit up and made more vivid by the resplendent sunshine. It was already growing hot when we arrived at my cousins' house, and very pleased we were to sit down in the cool verandah and rest our eyes on the green trees and lovely flowers in their shady garden. And here I must remark that this first cordial welcome, which made us feel at home, in a far and strange land, was a fitting introduction to DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 5 the unvarying kindness and hospitality with which we were received wherever we went. It added enormously to our pleasure that from first to last the English and the Indians, high and low, rich and poor, seemed imbued with a fixed determination that so far as in them lay we should not feel like strangers or aliens in the land, but that by every possible means they would contribute to our happiness and our comfort and would enable us to gain all the information, all the sport, all the enjoyment possible, and to see under the most favourable circumstances everything that was most worth seeing while we remained in the Indian Continent. On the day following our arrival we went by the kind invitation of Sir George Clarke to stay at Government House, and I owe to His Excellency my first insight into the Government of India from within. Here again we met with the greatest kindness and were favourably launched on our lengthy tour. We visited the Towers of Silence, where the Parsees expose their dead to be eaten by the vultures, the Caves of Elephanta, too well known to need description by me, the lovely Victoria Gardens and the Industrial quarter above Byculla. On the 27th November we left Bombay and were rather appalled by the prospect of a journey of two nights and the in- tervening day in the train. However, we found it easier than we expected, for after dining at 6 INDIA OF TO-DAY Government House we joined the train and found our beds ready made up by our native servants in a 'family carriage. The interest of the journey in this fascinating country, with all its fresh sights and sounds, dispelled any feeling of fatigue or monotony which we might otherwise have experienced. On the second morning we arrived at Udaipur, one of the most beautiful spots on the whole earth. We were received by the Maharana's Munshi and were at once driven to His Highness's Guest House. It was like a glimpse of Fairy Land. Coming from our long and dusty journey we were escorted into a cool and spacious house standing high above a lake with a beautiful view in all directions. We were the sole occupants of the Guest House and everything was arranged for our comfort and convenience. If we wanted baths they were ready in a trice ; were we ready for breakfast the Munshi clapped his hands ; in came numerous attendants, and in a few minutes a sumptuous repast set off with fruit and flowers was daintily served. Carriages and horses, boats and boatmen, all were at our disposal. The Palace of Udaipur is a dream of beauty, standing on the shores of a lovely lake, where the Palace of a dazzling whiteness descends in graceful terraces and picturesque fa9ades to the water's edge. In the lake are numerous small islands each with its miniature palace, which picturesquely dot DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 7 the surface of the lake when seen from the Palace, but as seen from the lake when you row out and look back, the whole of these island palaces melt into one perfect whole, with the Palace on the shore. We had every opportunity of visiting the Palace and the native town, and I gained much useful information from the Maharana's wise and faithful Munshi. One remark of his struck me forcibly when we were discussing native workmen, their wages and their ways. I had said that their wages seemed very small and he replied, " You will excuse me, Sahib, but you must not fall into the common error of the Sahibs in judging Indian workmen from a Western standpoint. These men would rather go on in the old way with the old wages than do an extra amount of work for treble the pay." And as I travelled through India, I became more and more convinced that what he said was true. The fact is that the Indian countryman is a very contented individual and like a wise man only asks to be let alone to carry out his daily avocations, as his father and grandfather have done before him, and to receive a wage which is ample for his ordinary wants and expenses. He is also very improvident, and, whatever wage he receives, is pretty sure to spend more than he can afford on every occasion of a marriage or other ceremony in his family, especially a funeral. He has no idea of laying by any provision for 8 INDIA OF TO-DAY a rainy day and when a failure of the Monsoon causes a loss of his crops, or an attack of plague threatens to carry off himself and his family wholesale, he is entirely dependent on his Eaja in the Native States or on the British Eaj in the British Territory to protect him from the natural consequences of his waste and want of foresight, his occasional extravagances and his propensity to borrow from the Bania and run into debt. One morning we went out early in the boat to try and get a Mahseer. There is no use in my trying to describe the beauty of the scene, as it was lovely beyond the power of any pen to depict. We rowed out into the lake in all the delightful freshness of the early morning, leaving behind us the beautiful white Palace on the shore and gradually passing the islands with their palaces upon them until we reached the far side of the lake, and rowing past the spot where the river joins the lake I soon hooked a fine fish of some 13 Ibs. weight, who after a gallant and exciting struggle was safely netted and brought into the boat. My wife and I each had another fish on, but we only succeeded in landing one. On the side of the lake opposite to the Palace the shore is green with rushes which push out for some distance into the shallow water. Many birds which were new and interesting to us were wading and, like ourselves, busy fishing, and far and near on the dry land or in the shallow water were numbers of wild DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 9 pigs, feeding, wallowing or otherwise enjoying themselves. We had a lovely row back to the Palace land- ing place, returning to the Guest House with a hearty appetite ; and we ate our fish which, coming fresh from the water, was quite excellent. The following evening we crossed the lake to the Maharana's hunting lodge. Here we saw a very curious scene. The Maharana's shikaris go out from the lodge at the same hour every evening and scatter grain on the rocky ground. The shikari sounds a horn and immediately from all the neighbouring hills and valleys come scampering at top speed numbers of wild pigs which eagerly eat up the grain, all the time fighting and scuffling with one another. It is not safe for anyone except the shikaris to approach too near when the pigs are feeding, as the old wild boars are very savage and would not hesitate for a moment to attack a stranger. Occasionally a fight takes place here between a tiger and a wild boar, the pig almost invariably being the victor and frequently killing the tiger. I was told, however, that in a fight between a lion and a pig, the lion would generally kill the pig. Our pleasure was greatly enhanced by the arrival at the Guest House of a very old friend and schoolfellow, Gordon Cunard, and his wife, who had been our fellow passengers on board the " Marmora " coming out to India. With them io INDIA OF TO-DAY we visited the old town and Palace and had a most delightful tea picnic at the Maharana's pavilion on an island in the lake. This island is really a delightful garden and shrubbery with most attractive pavilion and terraces, the latter being supported by huge marble elephants standing in the water. This gives the impression that the elephants are supporting the Island on their backs and is very effective. . Our voyage back in the boat was rendered somewhat weird and uncanny by the fact that huge bats or flying foxes hovered over us, crossing and recrossing the boat only a few feet above our heads. While visiting the Palace we were interested in observing the elephants which were stabled close to the Palace wall. A baby elephant especially attracted us by its playful ways and rather roguish expression and we asked why it was tethered alongside its mother instead of being allowed its freedom. We found that as usual the people on the spot knew better than the unin- formed stranger, as the little elephant had, we were told, until quite recently been given its liberty and played with the native children, but had become so frolicsome and familiar that in its ponderous gambols it became dangerous to the lives and limbs of its playmates and indeed had actually caused serious injury before the wise decision was made to tether it " pro bono publico." All good things must come to an end sooner or DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR n later, and as our time in India was limited we were obliged to bid good-bye to Udaipur all too soon as far as our inclination was concerned, but we spent a very pleasant evening the night before we started at the house of the Kesident, Mr. Claude Hill, who kindly invited us to dine, the Gordon Cunards being of the party in addition to Colonel and Mrs. Jenkins, who were also shipmates with us on the voyage out and who, we were delighted to find, were to be our companions on our departure the following day. We left Udaipur with many regrets and arrived at Chit or after a short journey in the train. A slight description of this wonderful place must suffice, as so many more able writers have given excellent descriptions of it already and I feel that it would be impertinent of me to attempt to compete. Briefly I may say that as our little party started off on the Maharana's elephant to visit this wonderful natural fort we were most powerfully impressed with the magnificent strength of its position. Eising abruptly from the plain Chitorgarh is some three miles long by a quarter to half a mile wide, with nearly perpendicular walls of rock varying in height from 300 to 500 feet. When strongly fortified, as it was by the Rajputs, with walls, bastions and gates, it was almost im- pregnable, but after holding out with marvellous courage and determination time after time against powerful foes, this fort had to surrender on three 12 INDIA OF TO-DAY occasions, though always after an heroic resistance, and in each case the final act was distinguished by the greatest coolness, courage and determination. The first occasion was in the 13th century when Ala-ud-din (Aladdin of " The Arabian Nights ") having heard that Padmini, a Cingalese princess of Eajput blood, married to Bhimsi, a relative of the Maharana of Chitor, was the most beautiful woman in the world, laid siege to the fort. Being unable to reduce the stronghold by any other means the crafty Ala-ud-din requested to be allowed to see Padmini's face reflected in a looking-glass, and this privilege was courteously granted to him. He was received with due ceremony and, accompanied by a limited number of followers, was admitted within the fort. After gazing into the mirror and making many flattering remarks as to the marvel- lous beauty of Padmini, he was taken with all honour and respect to the outer gate when he prayed that he might have the privilege of showing to Padmini's husband the Mohammedan Camp. The Eajput has always been distinguished for his courage, courtesy and high sense of honour, and so the offer was promptly and unsuspectingly accepted. No sooner, however, were Padmini's husband and a handful of followers well within the Mohamme- dan lines than they were seized, made prisoners, and informed that they would only be released on condition of Padmini being handed over to Ala-ud- din. Consternation at first reigned in Chitor, but DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 13 presently it was intimated to Ala-ud-din that in order to secure the release of their beloved Prince, Padmini, with the consent of the Kajput princes and people, had decided to accept the terms offered. Accordingly the next day a vast and splendid procession left the gates of Chitor and the Moham- medans prepared to receive with due pomp and triumph the lovely Padmini and her numerous retinue. With grief and anger struggling for supremacy in his heart, Padmini's husband accompanied the triumphant Moghul to meet the oncoming procession. We can realize his joy and pride when suddenly he found himself surrounded by 700 of his faithful Kajput warriors who, instead of Padmini and her handmaidens, had occupied the palanquins, keeping the curtains closely drawn till the last moment, when they all sprang out together armed to the teeth. A desperate fight ensued till Padmini and her husband regained the Fort, where we may be sure that they were warmly welcomed by the clever and courageous survivors of the Rajputs. I say advisedly survivors, because, alas, some hundreds of the best and bravest had cheer- fully sacrificed their own lives in the desperate though successful effort to rescue their gallant prince. Time passed on and the siege was not raised. On the contrary, Ala-ud-din, furious at having been baulked of his prey, collected a far more powerful force and Chitor was more strictly invested than ever. After holding out for the i 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY incredible period of nearly thirteen years, the in- trepid Eajputs found that starvation stared them in the face and that defeat in some form was inevitable. As a last resource they resorted to the expedient of sacrificing the ruling prince's sons as required by the goddess of Chitor. Of the twelve sons one was offered to the goddess each day. When it came to the last and youngest his distracted father declared that he himself would rather die, and choosing the flower of his chivalry directed the gates to be opened and a general sortie to be made, when the young prince was at all costs to be conveyed through the ranks of the enemy if possible to a place of safety. No weak surrender of themselves, their families and their household possessions commended itself, even in the last resort, to the descendants of the Sun and to their devoted wives. Building a vast funeral pyre in the vaults which lie deep in the heart of this extraordinary fortress, the wives and children of this gallant race bid farewell to the warriors, telling them to be brave to the end and wishing them a happy issue from their desperate straits. They then retired to their vaults and the sacred fire having been applied to the pyre, Padmini herself gave the signal for the vaults to be irrevocably closed, and with the rest placed herself on the burning pyre and died a willing sacrifice to her caste, her creed, and her royal race. Scarcely were the fatal vaults finally closed when every Eajput in the garrison DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 15 braced himself for the supreme effort and firmly grasping his sword charged through the now opened gates into the overwhelming masses of the enemy. Not one in twenty survived that day. It is estimated that altogether many thousands were left dead on the field of battle. A gallant little band, however, effected their escape to the Aravalli hills, with the last surviving prince of the royal line, Ajai Singh, through whom the royal line, so wonderfully preserved, continues to flourish, in the person of the highly respected Maharana, to the present day. Years afterwards Udai Singh and his son, Hamir, regained Chitor from the Mohammedans, and for some couple of centuries it remained in the hands of the Eajputs. Eumbha Eana, a descendant of Udai Singh, raised the splendid Tower of Victory on a commanding site in the Fort of Chitor to celebrate his victory over Mahmoud, which interesting monument survives to this day. His Tower, and the ancient Jain Tower of Fame, remain as most interesting ex- amples of old Indian carving and architecture. On at least two other occasions was Chitor the scene of terrible tragedies. Bahadur Shah having successfully maintained a siege, the women again, in their thousands, cheerfully committed sati, and the men desperately charged in a final effort for their lives and liberty. Thirteen 16 INDIA OF TO-DAY thousand of the slain testify to the courage and determination of the combatants on this occasion. Finally, the Great Moghul Emperor Akbar sacked Chitor, but the then ruling Prince, Udai Singh, effected his escape, with some of his devoted adherents, and, making his way south, founded the city of Udaipur, which has ever since been the residence of the ruling Princes of Eajputana. We had spent so much time in the very interesting occupation of inspecting the Fort that the short Indian twilight was almost gone, and darkness was closing in upon us as we resumed our places on the elephant on our way to the Dak Bungalow for dinner. Slowly but surely the elephant plodded along through the now weird and strange-looking country, and brought us in safety to our destination, and at 10 p.m. we rejoined the train en route for Ajmer. Here we arrived very early in the morning, and not being yet accustomed to the ways of Indian travel, we proceeded at once to the hospitable house of the Eesident, Mr. Colvin, who received us with the greatest cordiality, even at the unseemly hour at which we turned up, when, to my great relief, I found that as General Sir Archibald Hunter was departing by the early train, we had not actually caused Mr. Colvin to get up at unseemly hours or to feel inhospitable by not doing so. When we started on our long round from Bombay we were DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 17 rather upset by seeing that at certain points on our route we were timed to arrive at 4 o'clock in the morning or to start at 2.30 ; but we had not then learnt the beauty of the family carriage. When starting for the next stopping-place it is only necessary to say that you wish your carriage to be detached there. At whatever time the train arrives your carriage is placed in a siding, and you remain in bed until it is time to get up and go to your host's house to breakfast. Equally, when starting on a journey, you dine comfortably at the house where you are staying, and then drive down to the train and go to bed. During the early hours of the morning you are attached to the train, and proceed on your journey without disturbance. This arrangement saves immense inconvenience to travellers and hosts alike, and we soon learned to appreciate the comfort of it. Ajmer is an English oasis in a Native State, being actually English territory, but situated in the centre of and entirely surrounded by the Native States of Kajputana. Mr. Colvin, with great tact and ability, fulfils the double post of Commissioner of Ajmer and Political Agent to the courts of the Maharana and other chiefs, while Mrs. Colvin's genial charm is thoroughly appreciated by all who know her, and materially assists her husband in carrying out his social and other duties. We had heard so much of the beauty of Udaipur, and so little in praise of the scenery at o i8 INDIA OF TO-DAY Ajmer, that we were agreeably surprised to find how pretty a view was obtained from the [Resident's house, looking over a picturesque lake with hills beyond and lovely scenery all around us. We watched with interest the Indians coming down to bathe and to water their animals in the lake, and it was pleasant in the heat of the day to see the buffaloes lying quite covered by the water, with nothing but their noses and their horns appearing above the surface. I was told by Mr. Colvin that the monsoon was proving a partial failure, and that in consequence some degree of famine was to be expected. In conversation with him on the subject I soon realized that, at all events in any district over which he had control, no pains would be spared to mitigate the evil. Already famine committees were being summoned and every preparation being made to provide work and wages, or, where necessary, gratuitous relief to the prospective sufferers from the shortage of crops, although the actual want would not be felt for some two or three months at the earliest. This gave me a real practical insight into the solid and sub- stantial blessings which the British rule confers on the Indian native, and a practical refutation of the charges commonly brought against the Government by British and native agitators. Most worthy of study and reflection is the Mayo College at Ajmer, to which Mr. Colvin DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 19 kindly took us soon after our arrival. This College is specially adapted for the education of the sons and relations of the ruling princes and rajas. I was greatly struck and impressed with the great advantages which this College provides. Here the high-class Indian obtains a first-rate education, with all the advantages of an English public school brought to his door. He has distinguished and experienced English pro- fessors and tutors to instruct him, English gentle- men, capable of and eager to impart a high tone to the College, and, in addition to their studies, the pupils have provided for them cricket and football grounds, lawn-tennis courts, and gymnasia, in all of which they take a keen interest, and in which I can testify, from my own observation, that they individually and collectively attain a praiseworthy proficiency. The boys themselves were high-bred, good-looking, fine young fellows, who would do credit to any College, in whatever part of the world you might find them. The temples here claim attention from their antiquity, their architecture, and more than one from the stories and traditions connected with their past history. For instance, the Temple Arhai Dinka Jhompra, the Hut of Two-and-a-half Days, was supposed to have been converted in that very short period from a Jain temple into a Mohammedan mosque. To appreciate what that means it is necessary to see this large and 20 INDIA OF TO-DAY important building, the pillars being of singular beauty and the towers of a height and situation which command a fine view of the city of Ajmer. Another very interesting temple is the Dargah, which contains the shrine of Khwajah Mohi-ud- Din, and is venerated alike by Hindus and Mohammedans. Before entering this sacred ground it was necessary to have our feet enveloped in felt overshoes, and on leaving the temple wreaths of flowers were hung round our necks, and bouquets of flowers put into our hands, as an auspicious offering to us on our visit. Having reluctantly parted from Ajiner and our kind host and hostess, we started after dinner one evening for Jaipur, where we were cordially received by the Eesident, Col. Herbert, and his family. With the greatest kindness and fore- thought he had laid out a little programme which would enable us to see as much as possible in the time at our disposal without hurry or confusion. Amongst other things Col. Herbert informed us that the Maharaja, hearing that I was anxious to gain an insight into Indian sport, had given orders to his people that we were to be provided with horses from his own stud, and all preparations were to be completed for us to enjoy our first day's pig-sticking. On arrival at Jaipur railway station we were DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 21 met by the Maharaja's smart carriage and a good pair of horses, which drove us up to the Kesidency, where Col. Herbert kindly received us, and escorted us to the rooms which he had provided for us delightfully cool, airy rooms, which he informed us had been specially fitted up for the Prince and Princess of Wales when they visited Jaipur on their visit to India during the winter of 1905-6. The drive was pleasant and picturesque as we traversed the magnificently laid out and beautifully kept Earn Newas Gardens, and after- wards the shady and pleasant Eesidency grounds, to Col. Herbert's house. After welcome rest and refreshment we were taken to see the Palace and Observatory, passing through the main street of the town on our way. The prevailing note of colour in Jaipur is pink, the houses being nearly all tinted with a similar shade, which produces a bright, harmonious, and picturesque scenic effect. The Maharaja of Jaipur is pre-eminently an improving landlord of the best class, the result being that the city of Jaipur is lit with gas, is provided with a first-class water supply and a good system of drainage, while the Museum is equally distinguished for the excellence and variety of the exhibits, the artistic harmony of the building and its contents, and the practical utility which is attained by skilful classification and the exact and clear description attached to every one of the exhibits. We 22 INDIA OF TO-DAY admired the modern brasswork which provides remunerative employment for a considerable number of workers, and we made some purchases which serve now to remind us agreeably of our pleasant stay at Jaipur. In the cool of the later afternoon we were taken to see the fine Palace of the Maharaja, in which we were greatly interested, and were then shown over the wonderful Observatory, which was built some three centuries ago by Jai Singh, and is the most remarkable structure of the kind in the world. Passing on to the stables we saw some 200 horses in open stalls surrounding a central manege in which the horses are trained to perfection on somewhat similar lines to the training of our troop horses, learning to obey at once every indication conveyed by the hand, leg and balance of the rider, and being also taught to jump artificial fences in a collected and correct manner. When we had completed our inspection, the Maharaja's Master of the Horse asked which horses we should like to have sent out for the pig-sticking in the morning. We naturally replied that, as he knew all about the horses and we did not, we should prefer to leave the selection of our mounts to his own discretion. With great practical acumen he suggested that the apparently most suitable horses should be sent to the Eesidency the same evening, and we should pick out from them those which we DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 23 preferred, and at the same time try on our saddles. This was a very good idea, for, the horses being unused to a lady's saddle, it was important that as we could not alter my wife's saddle to fit a horse, we should choose a horse that would fit the saddle. It was a thoroughly Oriental scene when we sallied forth after dinner to examine the horses and fit saddles by the light of some torches, but all was shortly arranged to every one's satisfaction, and we turned in shortly afterwards to be ready for an early start in the morning. It was in the dim twilight that I climbed into the Maharaja's carriage at 4.30 in the morning, eagerly anticipating my first ride after a pig. Seated in the carriage was Captain Strong, who kindly accompanied me to initiate me into the art of pig-sticking, which is not quite so easy as those who have not tried it might suppose. The longer that I remained in Captain Strong's company the more I was convinced that he was rightly named both with regard to muscle and character, and thoroughly well did he instruct and shepherd us that day. Never shall I forget the glory of that early morning in the jungle. After a lovely drive of some miles in the carriage, we arrived at the meet, and the sun not yet being up, there was a weirdly picturesque effect in the assembly of men and horses awaiting us in the grey dawn. No less than five rajas were there, relations of the 24 INDIA OF TO-DAY Maharaja, who received me with true Kajput courtesy and respectful cordiality. The horses for my wife and myself were there, each led by his own sais, and the picture was completed by the mounted and dismounted beaters, many of them carrying our spears or their own weapons, but all brimming over with suppressed eagerness for the sport. It was still too early to begin the real business of the day, but the fitting of my wife's saddle took some little time and barely was that completed when she arrived in another of the Maharaja's carriages, and quickly took her place in the saddle, and all was ready for a start except the sun, who still kept us waiting. To pass the time we took a little turn into the jungle and marvellous was the revelation of the life of the jungle people. Birds of all varieties of brilliant plumage, including the magnificent blue jay, darted in glittering splendour across our path and flashed from one point of vantage to another. Herds of deer raised startled heads as we moved through their feeding grounds, but quickly realizing that we meant them no harm resumed their tranquil occupation of browsing on the sweet and natural jungle growth. Pigs there were also in numbers, but all were sows with quite small pigs which did not care to venture far afield. Now rapidly the light increased and we re- crossed the road by which we had come to the meet, and my first day's pig-sticking was really DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 25 begun. Far and wide spread the beaters ; wo ranged ourselves in line and slowly and steadily we all moved across the country. Here and there were clumps of scrubby trees, at intervals patches of high jungle grass made their appearance, and the great open spaces in which you could really " ride a pig." To all those who imagine that pig- sticking is a tame or cruel sport I would commend the present Prime Minister's aphorism, " Wait and see." Wait till they can go out and try the sport for themselves. Let them start at daybreak on a keen and well-trained horse that they have never ridden before, with the reins in one hand and a long spear in the other ; let them experience the wildly exhilarating dash when the boar is fairly away, the race with the other riders going for all they are worth over a rough and broken country, plunging at top speed in and out of dry nullahs, through small patches of high grass on the other side of which may be a deep depression or an equally formidable bank or a pile of stones, with only one hand to control an excited and eager horse in the pink of condition, and the other hand occupied in keeping their spear from becoming entangled in the various obstacles as they pass at top speed, knowing that if the butt of their spear should get caught they run a good chance of being knocked off their horse or seriously injuring them- selves or their steed, and that if the spear is knocked out of their hand it may inflict a ghastly and 26 INDIA OF TO-DAY perhaps fatal wound upon one of their companions and competitors following at his best pace close behind them ; let them wait until after a long and inspiriting ride under a blazing sun they find themselves somewhat blown, hot and excited, close to the now furious wild boar ; let them watch his eye grow red and his bristles rise; let them successfully avoid being brought to ground by a sudden jink on the part of the pig ; let them gallop on, on, on, spear lowered, still at top speed, over all sorts of ground, and then receive the sudden and frantic charge of a big, heavy, desperate boar who chooses his own time for the charge, and naturally seizes the moment most favourable to himself and least favourable to his opponent, and I venture to say that they will form a more true and just estimate of this noble sport. Tame this sport can never be when you have the conditions of excitement and danger which now are its accompaniments. Cruelty I cannot couple with a sport when it is a fair competition between the pursuer and the pursued. The pig knows his ground and frequently succeeds by strategy in gaining a secure haven of safety, and failing that he charges his opponent with courage and determination. While the man has his spear the pig is armed with his formidable tusks, which he well knows how to use to the best advantage. The bold and skilful rider will sur- mount all difficulties and kill the pig; and the DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 27 crowning glory of tho sport is that whether by the stumbling of your horse, the accident of the ground, or the want of nerve or skill on the part of the rider, the pig gets his chance, he is quite capable of turning over both horse and rider, and if he has the opportunity he is as able and willing to kill his adversary as that adversary may be to kill him. Surely here are presented all the elements of a noble sport in its very best form. The qualities required are the finest that exist in human nature, and though these qualities may not appeal to the weak and timid, the mean and the ignoble, they will always appeal to the soldier, the sportsman, and to every one of high and generous instincts who though from circumstances unable to take part therein, can yet appreciate skill, courage, and endurance in their fellow countrymen. Such sport also gives opportunities for the exhibition of unselfishness and chivalry. I shall never forget when having been obliged to keep rather in a disadvantageous position after a pig in a dry nullah, I sent my spear right through him, the point appearing well out on his off flank, having just failed to pierce the heart at the first charge, only to find that the shaft of my spear broke half-way between the point and my hand, and when the pig, more angry than ever and quite undaunted, was preparing to charge again, Pertab Singh, a Rajput of high lineage and cousin of the 28 INDIA OF TO-DAY Maharaja of Jaipur, and also of the well-known and greatly-esteemed Sir Pertab Singh, immediately galloped alongside and offered me his spear. I naturally refused to take it and urged him to go at the pig himself, but he, with great self-denial, replied that I was the guest of the Maharaja, that I had already obtained first spear and he would greatly prefer that I should take his spear and give the pig his coup de grace, adding that if I did not take his spear he should remain with me, and practically left me no choice but to take it and continue the chase. We killed the pig shortly afterwards, but only just in time to prevent his gaining a dry nullah, when he would have in- evitably escaped, and I was assured would soon have recovered in spite of the fact that he was speared right through his body. The fact is that the Indian pig is one of the pluckiest and one of the hardiest beasts in exist- ence, and the charge of cruelty does not apply. Lest any of my readers should think that Pertab Singh was influenced by any but the highest motives of chivalry and sportsmanlike conduct in offering me his spear, I should like here to mention that in common with the other rajas who were out with us that morning, he was a consummate horseman, an artist with his spear, and of undaunted courage. As a further instance of his sportsmanlike courtesy I may mention that, in order that I might have every chance of success, DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 29 he with his own hands prepared and fitted leaden caps to the butt of my spears so as to secure their driving power, and to make sure that the work- manship should be of the best, and the balance of the spears as perfect as they could be made. I say with all confidence that these sports and the incidents which naturally arise out of them are of infinitely more value in creating and maintaining good feeling between the English and their Indian fellow-subjects than all the laws and regulations which the ingenuity of man, and especially of theoretic politicians, can devise. Long may they continue and flourish. It certainly is the case that when I pass in the hall of my house in Yorkshire the head of that gallant boar with the spears crossed below him, I am always filled with pleasant recollections of a grand day's sport, and experience a glow of grateful remembrance of my noble host and my gallant and sporting companions. On our return from pig-sticking we thoroughly enjoyed a bath and did ample justice to the excel- lent breakfast which followed. After a short rest we started off again at 2 o'clock to visit the ancient city of Amber. We drove luxuriously in the Maharaja's carriage to the foot of a hill, when we changed very much for the worse into a tonga, which jolted us along over a very rough road for half a mile. Thus we were not sorry to make another exchange, this time on to the back of the 30 INDIA OF TO-DAY Maharaja's elephant, a very fine animal which took us swiftly and comfortably to the top of the hill and into the courtyard of the Palace. Here we dismounted and entered the Palace, passing hy a little shrine sacred to Kali, the goddess of destruc- tion, where a goat is daily sacrificed (rumour has it that human victims were the regular sacrifice in bygone days), and judging from the evil odour emanating from the dark and gloomy recess, we were convinced that the daily sacrifice was duly carried out. Ascending to the upper part of the Palace we admired the ornamentation of the building and the views of the water gardens and town below. Even in the wreck of the buildings and gardens as they appear at the present day, one can imagine the romantic beauty which must have been theirs when the Palace was filled with a brilliant court and their dependants. We visited the zenana, where beautiful marble screens and delicate carving carry one's mind back to the days when lovely women lived and loved, laughed and plotted, behind the locked doors which divided the harem from the rest of the world. Presently we came to a locked door leading on to a terrace which promised an extended view of the surround- ing country. As the bearer of the keys exhibited some reluctance to open the door, our attendant demanded the reason why, and we elicited the information that a party of English sightseers had DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 31 a day or two previously approached the same spot and been very eager to visit the terrace. No sooner were they all through the door, however, than they were attacked by a swarm of bees, which speedily drove them back and they were glad to have the door shut behind them. The bees, however, when once aroused were not so easily pacified, and while many of them had got through the door and were still harassing the too venture- some tourists, others had ranged around and discovering the inoffensive elephant, promptly attacked and stampeded him, so that the tourists had to pursue on foot the rapidly retreating elephant, fighting off as well as they could the bees which still pursued them. I could not help seeing a moral in this, namely, that in many of the affairs of this life, and especially in native affairs, it is frequently wiser to be guided by the advice of those who know, and not to run the risk by prying into hidden recesses of raising a hornet's nest about one's ears, which is far more easy to provoke than to allay. But enough of moralizing, We returned in the evening to Jaipur, and after a capital dinner in most pleasant company we parted with regret from our genial host and hostess, feeling that we owed them an eternal debt of gratitude for all that they had enabled us to see and to do and for their kindness and hospitality, and we departed by the midnight train in our family carriago for Delhi. 32 INDIA OF TO-DAY The history of Delhi goes back so far that the early days are shrouded in the mists of antiquity. In the Mahabharata we read of the existence of Old Delhi as the home of the Pandavas, after their successful battles with the Kauravas, and from that time onwards a city of Delhi has always maintained itself and been a place of very consider- able importance, being for centuries the capital city of the Mohammedan empire. The story of the original founding of Delhi was mythical, and may be briefly described as providing the focus for the legends which set forth the glorious exploits of the above-named families and the battles and single combats which took place. Frequently we hear of the intervention of the gods, Hanuman, the King of the Monkeys, and Krishna, who supported the cause of the Pandavas. Delhi suffered many vicissitudes. Some hundreds of years after its foundation we hear of it as the residence of Ala-ud-Din, a sultan who was bent on subduing the whole of India. In successive battles he won victories over the Mahrattas and the Eajputs, and it was he who maintained one of the celebrated sieges of Chitor, which he captured after a siege of nearly thirteen years. Ala-ud-Din eventually returned to Delhi laden with enormously valuable spoils from the Deccan. After the death of Ala-ud-Din there was a Hindu revolt in Delhi, terrible excesses were committed, and the revolt spread until eventually DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 33 the Turkish Viceroy of the Punjab marched on Delhi, took the city by storm, and established himself as the first sultan of the house of Tughlak. He, however, did not live at Delhi, but removed the capital to the strong fortress of Tughlakabad, a few miles off, which he founded and called after his own name. Time passed and Timor the Tartar marched from Kabul and Samarkand, and after going through Persia invaded Eussia to the neigh- bourhood of Moscow. In 1398 he marched through the Punjab to Delhi, where he was proclaimed Emperor of India. Timor, however, did not remain in Delhi, but collecting a vast amount of treasure in Hindustan he returned to his capital, Samarkand. There is again a lapse of centuries until Delhi entered on its period of splendid prosperity and glory under the Moghul (Mongol) Emperors. It was in 1482 that Baber, who was a Chagatai Turk or Tartar, first saw the light. At the age of twelve he succeeded to the kingdom of Khokand, and he was not more than sixteen when he con- quered Bokhara, and established his court at Samarkand, and but forty-four when, having invaded the Punjab and Hindustan, he took possession of the cities of Delhi and Agra. His son Humayun was outwitted by Shere Khan, the Afghan, and remained in exile in Persia for fifteen years, at the end of which time he returned to D 34 INDIA OF TO-DAY Delhi, and by the help of a Persian army reinstated himself there as Padishah.* Akbar, the son* of Humayun, was the real maker of the Moghul Empire. It was during his distinguished reign, which lasted for half a century, that wonderful stories were brought to England with regard to the Great Moghul, his enormous revenues and vast armies, his wives, his elephants, menageries, and fortresses. In this connection it is worthy of mention that a crazy Englishman, named Tom Coryat, took an oath at the sign of the Mermaid, in Bread Street, that he would go to India, see the Great Moghul, and ride on an elephant. He fulfilled this vow by walking from Jerusalem to Delhi, and so on to Ajmer, where the Great Moghul was holding his court in the heart of Eajputana. By this time Akbar was dead, but Coryat rode on an elephant, and saw the Emperor Jehangir. Akbar's reign was distinguished alike for his brilliant victories over all who opposed him, for his wise and politic rule, and for his excellent system of administration and organization. It was during his reign and that of his immediate ancestors that Delhi rose to the zenith as capital of the Mohammedan Empire. Beautiful buildings arose, the Palace itself being witness to the skill in marble tracery and carving, while the lovely little Moti Musjid, the Pearl Mosque, is a thing of * " Indian History Primer," J. Talboys Wheeler. DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 35 beauty admired by all who see it at the present day. Each of the Great Moghuls added to the wealth of the city by the treasure which he brought from conquest and plunder, or from tribute and presents of dependent states. But all', the same we must not forget that at this period the Moghul Emperors spent by no means all their time in Delhi, but constantly made imperial progresses through the country. From Delhi to Lahore and Kashmir on the north-west, and from Delhi to Agra, Ajmer, the Nerbudda river on the frontier of the Deccan, and the port of Surat still further south, near the mouth of the river Tapti. From Hindustan to the Himalayas in the hot season, from Hindustan to the Deccan in the cold season, the Great Moghul was marching or halting with his wives and ministers, his grandees and armies, and vast trains of artisans, shopkeepers, and camp followers. The Moghul camp was a moving city, with palaces and fortifications of imperial scarlet and gold in the centre ; pavilions of white and blue for the grandees at fixed dis- tances ; streets of tents in regular order and bazaars supplied with provisions and necessaries from all the villages round. When horse and foot, elephants, camels, and mules were on the march, burning incense was carried before the Padishah as though he were a god. The water of the Ganges was brought in jars, sometimes from long 36 INDIA OF TO-DAY distances, for his special drinking. The cares of State were thrown aside, and hunting expeditions with lords and ladies took the place of the durbars.* Then again the Great Moghul would return to Delhi, which immediately became the centre of all that was most imperial and magnificent, and where the business of the Empire was transacted and audiences given to the people, or neighbouring potentates were received and entertained with all the pomp and ceremony imaginable; and it was at Delhi that Sir Thomas Eoe, the ambassador despatched by James I., was received by the Emperor Jehangir, and secured special privileges for the Honourable East India Company. After the death of Akbar, Delhi enjoyed a long period of glory and prosperity under the successive reigns of Jehangir, Shah Jehan, and Aurungzeb, Akbar's direct descendants, but after the death of Aurungzeb the Moghul Empire began to decline, until at last the Moghul Emperors were mere puppets in the hands of their ministers. The Mahrattas gradually increased their power, and were only kept quiet by large payments amounting to about a quarter of the land revenue, which was known as Chauth (or Chout). In spite of this the Mahrattas made occasional raids on Delhi, deposed and frequently murdered the reigning Emperor, and substituted one of their own choice ; while the Nawabs and Dewans of the provinces kept * " Indian History Primer," J. Talboys Wheeler. DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 37 back large sums due to the Treasury at Delhi, and bribed the minister to shut his eyes to their defalcations. The inevitable result followed. History re- peated itself, and when the internal government became weak, the strong man from outside came in and took charge. Nadir Shah, a Persian ad- venturer of great force of character, came into power about 1730, and having conquered Persia and Afghanistan, advanced by way of Kabul and the Punjab upon Delhi, and occupied the city with his troops. During the night the citizens arose and fell upon the unsuspecting soldiery and butchered them without mercy. Next morning Nadir Shah rode through the streets, and saw his soldiers* corpses lying in every direction. He was not the man to stand upon ceremony, and promptly ordered a general massacre of the inhabitants. Thousands were put to death, and eventually Nadir Shah returned to Persia with money and jewels estimated at the value of one hundred millions sterling. After this the Afghans and Mahrattas struggled for the supremacy of Delhi, until the Mahrattas fought the fatal battle of Paniput, in which they lost 200,000 men killed, including most of their leaders. This happened in 1761, the same date at which the British established their supremacy in Bengal. In 1803, Shah Alam, the nominal Padishah at 38 INDIA OF TO-DAY Delhi, was taken under British protection, and Lord Dalhousie arranged that when he died his successor should remove with his whole family to the Kutub, an old royal residence some miles from Delhi. This brings us to the next great event in the history of Delhi, namely, the part played by the ancient capital in the period of the Indian Mutiny. In order to understand the cause of this terrible calamity it must be remembered that when in 1856 Lord Canning succeeded Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General of India, the province of Oudh had already been brought under British adminis- tration as a non-regulation province. Profound dissatisfaction had arisen in this province from various causes, chief amongst them being the ignoring of the claims of the native talukdars, who, whatever their faults and shortcomings may have been, exercised considerable influence in this district, which formed the principal recruiting ground for the Bengal Army. It was at this critical moment that a new cartridge was issued to the troops, being greased as an improvement upon those then in use. At that time the soldiers bit off the end of the cartridge before pouring the powder down the barrel and ramming home the bullet. Here was a splendid opportunity for the agitator, who stated that the cartridge was greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The Mohammedans and the Hindus DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 39 equally resented the innovation as an attempt upon their religious scruples, since the Moham- medans are forbidden to taste the flesh of swine, and were therefore greatly affronted at the idea that they should bite a cartridge greased with lard, and the Hindus, who hold the cow as sacred, looked upon it as gross sacrilege that they should defile themselves by tasting the fat of cows. We all know what followed first, a futile mutiny at Barrackpur, near Calcutta, and another at Barhampur, both of which were speedily put down ; a similar fate met the rising at Lucknow, at the hands of that splendid soldier and ad- ministrator, Sir Henry Lawrence. But it was very different at Meerut, the largest cantonment in India, lying only forty miles from Delhi, while it was 1000 miles from Calcutta. Here, on a hot Sunday in May, when the Europeans were at church, the sepoys seized their arms, and suddenly rushing out of their lines, shot down their officers, together with the officers' wives and children, and any white men that they came across. They then set fire to the bungalows, released the prisoners from jail, and marched off to Delhi before any European troops could be brought up to check them. At this time there were three sepoy regiments on the Kidge outside Delhi, and no European regiment on the spot. The Delhi sepoys joined the mutineers who arrived from 40 INDIA OF TO-DAY Meerut, and brutally butchered an English chap- lain and fifty women and children, who had taken refuge in the Palace/ The British officers on the Eidge, with their wives and children, escaped after enduring incredible hardships, and after many hair-breadth escapes. For five months, from May to September, 1857, the city of Delhi remained in the hands of the rebels, and it was not until many regiments and a regular siege-train had been sent to the Eidge that, at last, after many gallant attempts, the strongly-fortified city of Delhij.was recaptured by our troops. Since that date, Delhi has been the scene of certain thrilling events which cannot fail to leave their mark upon the future of the Empire, and the history of the world. It is sufficient to enumerate the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India on the 1st of January, 1877. The magnificent State entry of Lord Curzon into Delhi, on December 29, 1902, accompanied by all that was most exalted of English and Indian notabilities then in India, and the subsequent Durbar on New Year's Day, 1903. Finally, the Durbar of December 12, 1911, distinguished by the presence of H.M. King George V. and our beloved Queen, at which the momentous decision was announced, constituting Delhi the capital of India. Such has been the record of this famous city up to the present time. DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 41 It is yet too soon to predict what will be the effect of this great change upon the fortunes and future of the Empire; let us therefore content ourselves with wishing all success to the ancient Queen of India, and trust that she may shine in years to come as in the years that are past, but with the added glory of peace and prosperity, instead of the harsh, though glorious, methods of the Old Kegime. I have written at perhaps unpardonable length with regard to the history of Delhi, and my excuse must be that, having now become the capital of India, I conceived that my readers would not be uninterested in a recapitulation of the chances and changes of former years. I shall not offend again, but in the rest of my account of our personal tour shall try to confine myself, so far as possible, strictly to our own experi- ences and impressions. On arriving at Delhi, we drove straight to the Hotel Cecil, where Mr. Meredith, the Deputy- Commissioner, had kindly engaged rooms for us. We had charming rooms on the first floor, and have the most pleasant recollections of our enter- tainment in this excellent hostelry, our hostess being equally distinguished for her courtesy, kind- ness, and capability. What added to our satis- faction was that Mr. and Mrs. Cunard were also staying in the hotel. Our first visit was to the Jama Musjid, where, 42 INDIA OF TO-DAY from a balcony over the gateway, we could over- look the courtyard, where large numbers of the faithful were engaged in their devotions. I should here like to remind tourists that when visiting a Mohammedan mosque or Hindu temple they are in a place of worship which, though differing in many ways from the churches and chapels to which they are accustomed, is nevertheless representa- tive of the higher life to those who assemble there in accordance with the dictates of their creed ; and I do appeal to them most earnestly to pay respect to the feelings of those who are gathered together for a serious purpose, and to avoid giving offence, by laughter or loud con- versation, to the susceptibilities of the devout worshippers. Personally, I cannot withhold my tribute of respect to all those who endeavour to do their duty in any capacity, and to conform to the religious exercises which their conscience dictates, whether the obligations and restrictions thereby laid down agree with my own religious convictions or not. After luncheon, we drove to the Eidge, every yard of which makes us thrill with the memory of former effort and strenuous endeavour. The Flagstaff Tower recalled to us the awful sufferings endured by the 135 women and children who were shut up here for three days without food, many of whom died from their privations ; and of the brave woman who managed to get through to our lines DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 43 and so procure relief to be sent to the rescue of those she had left behind. Driving down the hill from the Mutiny Memorial, we had quite a lively experience ; when driving up on to the Ridge, we noticed that one of the horses was very unsteady, and only half- trained, but it was when we were going down at the end of the Ridge, that the fun really began. One horse had, I should think, never been in harness before, and not having learned to hold back going downhill, he became more and more restive on feeling the weight of the carriage behind him. The natural result was that we swayed from side to side till we were brought up by a low wall on one side of the road. The older horse, who was on the off-side, was forced over the wall, and there being a slight drop on the far side, he almost disappeared from sight, only his head being visible, with the bridle nearly pulled over his ears ; and he was almost throttled by the throat-lash. The young horse was, merci- fully, so frightened at what had happened and the position in which he found himself, that he put his toes against the wall, and the wheels being also jammed against it, we did not all go over ; had we done so, we might have been seriously 'injured, as the ground falls away very sharply at this spot, and the carriage and horses would probably have rolled over and over into the dry nullah below. 44 INDIA OF TO-DAY My wife jumped nimbly out over the carriage door ; my native servant, Canji, jumped down from the box and opened the door, through which I stepped safely on to the road ; and then we all lent a hand to get the horses cleared of the harness and back into a safe position. We were obliged to cut away part of the harness, which was not a serious loss, since it was so rotten and patched already that the only wonder was it had held together so long as it did. Soon we had all clear again, and were able to laugh at our misadventure, and to reflect on the adage, that "All's well that ends well"; but, greatly to the disgust of the native driver, we refused to re-enter the carriage, and walked back to the hotel, which was not far away. The man drove alongside of us for some distance, imploring us to get into the carriage again, as otherwise he would be sacked on his return, and he had a wife and children dependent upon him, etc. However, we did not get in, and next day we saw the same man driving as usual, and were only just in time to stop him taking out some other people with the very same pair of horses which had caused the accident to our carriage on the Eidge. So we wrote him down a fraud, and resolved not to trust to his tender mercies any more, a decision to which we closely adhered while we remained in Delhi. I shall not describe the Fort and the Palace, as DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 45 so many graphic descriptions have already been given, but I must say that we gazed with admiration on the Diwan-i-Khas, beautiful in white marble and inlaid stones ; on the queen's bath with its stream of clear water running through its marble channel ; on the lovely Moti Musjid, or Pearl Mosque ; on Humayun's tomb a splendid monument in red sandstone and marble, at some distance from the city. From there we made our way to the Kutub Minar, raised long ago as a tower of victory, which, although deprived of its cupola in 1803, remains a commanding feature of the landscape. It is 238 feet high, flanked by the ruined mosque and the court of Ala-ud-Din ; while in the same enclosure the Iron Pillar endures as one of the oldest and most famous of Indian antiquities. We were fain to acknowledge that great minds and great characters existed in former days, who were able to produce such enduring memorials of their fame ; and to feel how petty is the spirit which vaunts the achievements only of the present time in raising a building of extraordinary size, though devoid of beauty, shutting our eyes to the great- ness of the past and the splendid possibilities of the future. On the other hand, we were deeply impressed with the practical importance and beneficence of the irrigation works and the canal, which utilize the waters of the Jumna. We motored out to 4 6 INDIA OF TO-DAY examine the works, and realized how great is the benefit, direct and indirect, to millions of the population by the irrigation system, which I do not hesitate to say is one of the greatest benefits introduced and maintained by our administration. We dined on the evening of December 8 with Mr. Meredith, the Deputy Commissioner, and his family, and he summoned the chief shikari for consultation as to where I could go to shoot the next day with the best prospects of success. All was arranged, and early the next morning, accom- panied by my wife, I started off in Mr. Meredith's motor-car for Quadipur. Arrived on the ground we found all in readi- ness, shikaris and beaters waiting for us, and we started off keenly anticipating what might be the result of our first day's shooting in India. I was naturally keen to get a black buck, but I was eager also to shoot small game ; so by the advice of my host I took both gun and rifle. We started off with a gun, and I soon had the satis- faction of shooting hare, sandgrouse and partridge ; but the elusive black buck kept well out of range even of the rifle, which was carried by the shikari to be ready in case of need. Imagine our satisfaction when Bhim Singh the zamindar of the locality in which we were shooting appeared on the scene. He kindly gave me a cordial welcome and offered his assistance to procure good sport, informing me that I was DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 47 following a highly distinguished sportsman, who had honoured him with his presence, viz. the Prince of Wales now His Gracious Majesty the King. Bhim Singh had brought for us boiled milk and other luxuries, and a tonga drawn by two magnificent white bullocks for my wife ; while a horse for my own riding was not forgotten. I was glad that I had taken Canji with me, as it facilitated a free exchange of views in general conversation. I found that Bhim Singh's father and grandfather had been always staunch supporters of the British Raj, even in the most troublous times, and that he himself was no less anxious to be true to his sovereign and Emperor. I was much interested in our conversation, and after luncheon Bhim Singh directed our pro- ceedings with a view to obtaining a black buck. The order of march was as follows. My wife proceeded in the tonga drawn by the white bullocks, while I walked with the shikari close behind, followed by the horse led by a native sais. The black buck, being accustomed to daily seeing similar processions, were thus rendered less suspicious ; and when we arrived within reasonable shooting distance of the best buck, I stood still to take a shot while the tonga continued its course. ' In this way I was assured that the buck would watch the advancing tonga and not notice that I stopped to shoot. 48 INDIA OF TO-DAY Whether through some error due to my in- experience, or that we had selected an excep- tionally wary old black buck it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that he was not so easily taken in, and ran for some distance before he turned to watch the tonga. Fortune nevertheless favoured me, because I noticed not far away some low jungle, which by the aid of my experience of stalking animals in other and far distant countries, I was able to gain without frightening my quarry, and a lucky shot gave me the satisfaction of seeing the black buck drop dead in his tracks. Even those who have not had the pleasure of taking part in real sport in India will, I am sure, with the Englishman's appreciation of the game, realize and sympathize with my glow of triumph on returning in the motor with my very mixed bag (or so it seemed to me at the time), consisting of a black buck, hares, two kinds of partridge, and sandgrouse. Afterwards, when enjoying our share of sport in different parts of India, I looked back with pleasure to our happy initiation. It was to me a special satisfaction that whatever we shot was useful not only for the trophies we obtained, but that the whole of the game was used for food. I am no butcher and have no pleasure in taking life unless some useful purpose can be served. Having bought some lovely silks in Delhi, and thoroughly enjoyed our stay in this most interesting district, we left at 10 p.m. on DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 49 December 9, for Lahore, where we arrived on the following morning at 11.30. Captain Kobertson met us at the station with the camel carriage, which is worthy of mention. The carriage itself, a large and roomy barouche, is most comfortable and is capable of being drawn by two or more camels. The drivers, clothed in a smart scarlet livery, sit on their respective camels, which trot along at a pace that those who have not witnessed it would hardly credit. A smart individual in livery occupies the box, and with other attendants there is quite an imposing cavalcade. After breakfast we drove in the camel carriage to the Delhi Gate, we mounted the Lieut.- Governor's elephant and made a most interesting progress through the bazaars and extremely narrow streets. We visited several mosques, the Fort, and the Akbari Darwaza, and drove out to Shah Dara to see the tomb of Jehangir. The Jubilee statue of Queen Victoria in bronze, with a lovely canopy of white marble, cannot fail to arrest the attention of anyone with the smallest degree of artistic sentiment ; we were thoroughly interested in all we saw on that memorable day. But if the day was full of interest what shall I say of the evening which we spent as guests of that distinguished governor and administrator, Sir Denzil Ibbetson ? I looked forward eagerly to E 50 INDIA OF TO-DAY the time when we should meet at dinner, and was immensely struck by his knowledge, his capacity, his modesty, and his courage. All his courage was needed, for alas ! he was suffering at the time from serious illness, so serious indeed that he only survived for a very few months, and although he was quite aware of his approaching end, I heard no single word of complaint from his lips. His only anxiety was with regard to his work. Never shall I forget his words. Speaking of his capability for still continuing in his position of Governor, he asked me whether I thought that he ought to resign. My reply was that so long as he felt capable of discharging the heavy and responsible duties of his office as Lieut. -Governor of the Punjab, I was certain that every one who knew the services which he had rendered to the Indian Empire in the past, would deeply regret the day on which his resignation was announced the more so in consequence of the cause. Sir Denzil's reply was characteristic of the man. He said, " I am so relieved to hear you say that, for I have been in doubt as to how far I was justified in retaining my position ; but I have already put my resignation in the hands of the Governor- General, and have asked him to accept it officially and to relieve me of my duties at the first indication that the quality of my work is falling off." Could anything be finer in a self-sacrificing DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 51 conception of duty than this? Sir Denzil then stated with calm courage his conviction that he could not live long, whether in office or at leisure, and expressed his satisfaction at explaining to an English M.P. his honest convictions with regard to the future of India, and the course which it was the duty of the English Kaj to pursue. And he added, with that modesty which really great men almost invariably possess though it is not always apparent to the superficial view of the public, that before he detailed to me the conclusions at which he had arrived, he wished me clearly to understand that all he claimed was that he understood some- thing! (a very little) of the conditions affecting a comparatively small part of India : and that if I questioned him with regard to other districts, he could not conscientiously claim that his opinion was of the smallest value. Now it must be clearly borne in mind that Sir Denzil Ibbetson had more intimate knowledge of the Punjab, and of all conditions however remotely bearing upon that district, than any Englishman living ; and he brought a sound and deliberate judgment to the consideration of the complicated problems which must always present themselves for solution in such circumstances as inevitably accompany our position in India. With tedious iteration, I must repeat that I believe with all sincerity that the continuous direction of Indian affairs, as an integral part of 52 INDIA OF TO-DAY the British Empire, is of incalculable advantage to all who are fortunate enough to come under that system which has been slowly and sometimes painfully evolved through the course of many years. With the sound information and profound statesmanlike ideas which were instilled into my mind that evening, I am not at present going to deal. Suffice it to say that my suggestions in later chapters of this book, are the result of a digest of what I gathered from the conversations which I was privileged to hold, with such wise and experienced leaders of the best public opinion in their districts as Sir Denzil ; and from the advice which I received throughout the country, from the civil and military authorities, and the District officers ; and I may add that I listened with the deepest interest, and gave my most careful con- sideration, to the point of view put before me by the Governor- General, the Commander-in-Chief, the Maharajas, the members of the Governor-General's Council, the Ministers of Native States, the Zemindars, the munshis, the English and Indian commercial representatives, the babus, the native clerks, shikaris, ryots ; in fact, all who were able and willing to throw light upon the difficult subject of the future government of India. My only test of the value of the opinion given, was that the information supplied and the deductions drawn, were the expression of a DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 53 genuine desire on the part of my informants for the lasting benefit of India as a whole ; and not for the temporary and possibly illusory benefit of a class, a creed, or a theory. Sir Denzil Ibbetson represented in the highest degree the principle which I have tried to describe. Self-sacrificing to a degree, his only ambition was to do his duty. How nobly he carried out his ideal will be more and more fully appreciated as time goes on. My hope is that we may have men in the future worthily to follow in his steps. I cannot help contrasting the modesty with which he put forward his views, deeply versed as he was in his subject after occupying for many years responsible positions in the country, with the cocksure statements and theories of those who can have at most only a very superficial grasp of the circumstances. I have tried to avoid falling into this same error, and shall confine myself, so far as possible, to presenting to those who are kind enough to read these pages a digest of what I saw and heard in India, with the impressions which were left upon my own mind ; and to make certain humble suggestions and criticisms, as to the value of which I confidently leave it to wiser and more competent minds to decide. From Lahore we proceeded to Peshawar, where, in consequence of the train being delayed on its journey, we did not arrive until midnight. Peshawar is not a very pleasant or safe place to 54 INDIA OF TO-DAY wander about in late at night ; and after making our way to the hotel, we were rather disgusted at finding it all shut up and the lights out. But we soon stumbled over the chaukidar, who was sleep- ing peacefully in the verandah, and he speedily roused some one up and obtained the keys of our rooms. Even then our difficulties were not entirely at an end, as our rooms opened directly on to the verandah, which was quite dark. Con- sequently as the chaukidar had no idea which key belonged to which door, we had to try our own hands at the job, not knowing exactly where the locks were ; but we soon discovered the locks and the keys which fitted them, and were glad to turn in for a well-earned rest. Hardly, however, were we well off to sleep when I was awakened by voices in the verandah, and discovered that our native servants, who were sleeping there, found the night too cold for their taste, so were passing the time in desultory con- versation supplemented with the loud crunching of sweet native wafers ; and I had to rouse up and take measures to secure repose for the rest of the night. With regard to the chaukidar mentioned above, I think that it may be of interest if I explain the condition under which he is employed. The system is really one of blackmail, and is arranged thus. The tribe who live in the place will supply you with a chaukidar at a fixed price. DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 55 So long as you'pay for the chaukidar's services the tribe will respect your property whether the chaukidar wakes or sleeps ; but the moment yon send him away they look upon it as quite fair to rob you to any extent, unless you are able by other means to watch over and protect your property. This is carried to such an extent in some districts that the police actually warn the residents that unless a chaukidar is employed the police cannot be responsible for the safe-guarding of the property. While on this subject I may point out that a somewhat similar system has for many years prevailed with regard to the Khyber Pass, whereby we pay a certain annual sum to the neighbouring hill tribes, 'who in return provide a native levy to protect the travellers upon the road. The protection extends to 100 yards on each side of the road and no further, and supposing that you are so unwise as to exceed that limit you must take your chance of being shot at any moment from the hills above. With regard to this it may be of interest if I describe our own visit to the Khyber Pass on December 13. We were prepared for the neces- sity for observing certain precautions, in fact on returning the previous evening from a drive in the direction of the Jamrud Fort, in answer to our suggestion that we might re-enter Peshawar by a different route from that which we had followed in leaving the town, Canji stated that the native 56 INDIA OF TO-DAY driver objected, owing to the fact that it was a bad road which we proposed to follow. We said that we did not mind tha't, and were willing to stand some jolting and discomfort in order to see a different part of the city, but Canji explained that it was not the state of the roadway which was bad but that there were plenty "badmash," plenty bad men who rendered the road unsafe when dusk was approaching. Next morning we were up betimes and found that there had been a sharp frost during the night, and the ground was white and crisp as we made our way round the hotel to our breakfast-room at 8 a.m. We were off by 9 o'clock in a carnage to Fort Jamrud, where it was necessary to change into a tonga owing to the exigencies of the road until we reached Ali Musjid. Having already explained the etiquette with regard to the sanctity of the road from the tribal point of view, I must add that twice a week the whole length of the Khyber Pass is guarded by a chain of small picquets and sentries in order to secure a safe passage for the incoming and out- going caravans from Central Asia, Afghanistan, Persia, etc., the regular days when we were there being Tuesday and Friday. Accordingly on the Friday, by kind permission of the authorities, we sallied forth and a most interesting day we had. Originally my wife and I had proposed riding up the Pass, but this idea DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 57 was discouraged and we were advised to stick to the usual mode of going up in a tonga, and on the whole I think that this was wise, for after driving some distance we saw a side valley branching off and thought how interesting it would have been if riding to have explored this road for a short distance. We learned afterwards that this was the opening to the Bazar Valley, the home of the Zakka Khels, who were even then in a state of unrest and against whom we had to send a strong contingent when they were in open rebellion two or three months later ; so we quite understood the wisdom of the authorities in taking every precaution to provide against the possibility of accidents to travellers. Sir Eoos Keppel has the military arrangements in hand at Peshawar, and being a soldier of exceptional ability and long experience on the frontier, he may be trusted to do his duty with credit to himself and the best advantage of the country. On our way up the Khyber Pass we saw a large caravan on its way outwards from India. An extraordinary sight to us were the camels, some of them carrying long iron bars which stuck out before and behind them. They were laden with every sort of strange merchandize that you could think of, and on top of all it was no uncommon sight to see women and the older children perched up with goods packed all round them, while hanging from the sides were huge 58 INDIA OF TO-DAY cages or panniers containing the little children, while smaller cages were filled with cocks and hens or similar live stock. Intermingled with the camels are donkeys and occasionally ponies, the wretched little donkeys being heavily overloaded. Later on, at Ali Musjid we saw an incoming caravan, the camels all being laden with different sorts of merchandize to be disposed of in India. Amongst other things were wonderful carpets and brocades, and a drove of young camels, mostly of the rough-haired Bokhara breed, going down to be sold in the Camel Market at Peshawar. The caravan was accompanied by the wildest- looking lot of men we had ever seen, all ready to abuse one another when any collision occurred between the animals, and quite ready to use their long knives on one another if and just as soon as they considered the occasion required it. One extra wild-looking individual with an immense tangle of jet-black hair begged me to buy a knife from him. The knife was worthy of the owner, being a very long, strong, wicked-looking weapon with a horn handle, a strong back rib, and sharpened to a point that would pretty nearly go through anything. I said that I did not want his knife, but he was very persistent, and drawing the knife from its carved wooden sheath, he asked if I would not give " panch rupia," five rupees, for it. I repeated that I had no use for it, but at last in a weak moment said " do rupia," two rupees. DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 59 He at once jumped at the offer, and I handed over the money. Afterwards I was very glad that I had bought it as I found that it came from the Tirah valley, the man I got it from being a native of that part, and was made by grinding down an English bayonet, probably stolen from our soldiers, and finished off by fitting on the horn handle and making a wooden sheath to carry it in. It is a striking souvenir of our visit to the Khyber Pass, though one does not care to reflect on the uses to which it may have been put or the way in which it was obtained. It is a favourite trick of the hill tribes to descend quietly at night and creep up under cover of darkness to some outlying picket or sentry, and if successful in effecting their surprise, they will silently murder the men and carry off their rifles, ammunition, and anything they can lay hands on. This they look upon as; good sport, to be much talked about and boasted of in their little villages in the remote fastnesses of the hills for long after. These contretemps have to be constantly guarded against, and when possible punished, and every now and then a regular punitive expedition is necessary to teach the natives that they cannot rob and murder our people with impunity, and that the British Raj is supreme and insists on law and order being respected. It is with some impatience that I read and hear sickly sentimental appeals on behalf of the 60 INDIA OF TO-DAY poor native who is represented as being cruelly punished by the British. Of course, such people are entirely ignorant of the circumstances of the wild tribes that they are talking about, and I only wish they would go out there and risk their own precious skins for a short time ; they would very soon change their opinion and their tone. It might be thought that the Khyber Pass would be a fairly quiet spot where one would hardly go for the sake of pleasant society or as a likely place to meet friends. There were only six other sahibs at Ali Musjid as well as ourselves, yet I was delighted to find that none of them were strangers, and in fact Captain and Mrs. McGregor, who were there, represented very old friends, for I have been glad to count her father and mother, General and Mrs. Stewart, among my valued friends for many years past, and had known Mrs. McGregor, of course, also when she was a girl. The other English people were Dr., Mrs., and Miss Clayton, from Leeds, in my native county of York- shire, and a girl friend of Miss Clayton's. It is pleasant when so far from home to meet such good friends with whom one has so many interests in common. We had brought our luncheon with us, and being near the little mosque with the fort perched in a commanding position on a high rock above us, one felt quite as if one was at a picnic at home, but when we suggested going a little way off to get a DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 61 more sheltered place for luncheon, we were asked at once which rocks we proposed to go to, as if we went beyond the one hundred yards limit from the road we should be fair game to the sniper ; how- ever, we soon settled ourselves comfortably in the shadow of some rocks within the prescribed area, nor were our appetites spoiled by the firing from the fort on the face of the hills beyond. It is indeed a wild country here, high hills rising peak above peak in all directions, huge rocks lying about everywhere, great valleys or narrow rifts intersecting the mountains, and the dark mouths of caves in every direction in which many of the tribesmen live. An ideal country for the guerilla warfare and wild, lawless life in which these fierce peoples delight. They are constantly carrying on petty feuds amongst themselves or little skirmishes with us, buoyed up by the know- ledge that Lundi Kotal and the frontier is not far off, and that if pressed too hard they can escape over the frontier into Afghanistan. However, under the excellent organization, constant vigilance and prompt punishment of recent years, the sport of the Pathans has been considerably curtailed. There is, however, a Pathan saying which is some guide to their character. It runs as follows : " First comes a sahib for trade or for sport, then come two sahibs making maps, after this follow many sahibs armed with rifles, who take our country from us ; therefore it is best to kill the first sahib. n 62 INDIA OF TO-DAY We left All Musjid at 2 p.m. and arrived in Peshawar abont 4 p.m., having been kindly invited by Lady Deane to go to tea at Government House. We found them playing lawn-tennis and croquet when we arrived, but it was not very long before we were glad to go indoors, as it was getting dark and very cold. We had, in fact, a fine variety of climate that day. When we left Peshawar in the morning the ground was still white from the sharp frost the night before ; at Ali Musjid we were baked with heat and very glad to get any shade we could, and by 5.30 in the evening it was again very cold and beginning to freeze. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Sir Harold Deane here and dining with him at Government House. We had a long conversation with regard to the Frontier Province over which he ruled as High Commissioner with conspicuous success. One great pull that he had was in being able to speak the various Hill dialects fluently, so that in deal- ing with the headmen in the various villages and outlying districts he was able to converse directly without the intervention of an interpreter. This was of incalculable advantage, and was one reason which, in addition to his many other admirable qualities, caused him to do so well while he occupied his very arduous and responsible position, and to be universally regretted by all who knew him. Alas ! he died within a few months of our visit although no one knew at that time that he DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 63 was ill. I cannot say how fortunate I consider myself to have been able to hear at first hand from Sir Harold Deane the results of his knowledge and experience in the Frontier Province as I had also been fortunate enough to hear from Sir Denzil Ibbetson all that he was good enough to impart to me with regard to the Punjab. May the names of these two great workers always be remembered with all due reverence and respect. Not the least interesting part of our ex- periences here was a visit to the Camel Market, to which we were accompanied by a chuprassi from Government House ; in this way we were enabled to walk about the market and inspect the camels and people close at hand ; but they were a wild lot Afghans, Pathans, and every sort of nationality, from Bokhara and all parts of Central Asia. Without the chuprassi we could not have seen much, as the Peshawar Camel Market is not the place to wander about in casually by yourself because it happens to be a fine morning. In such places all sorts of things happen, and happen suddenly, but as it was we had a very pleasant and instructive visit, and considerably enlarged our ideas as to the frontier conditions and ways of life. Another place of interest in Peshawar was Mul Chand's shop in the Bazaar, where may be seen every kind of Central Asian merchandise, including some first-rate embroideries. We made 64 INDIA OF TO-DAY several purchases here, and were fortunate in having the advice and guidance of Sir Harold and Lady Deane, and also of Dr. Spooner, the well- known antiquarian and archaeologist, consequently we were very pleased when we got home with the purchases which we had made, and only wished that we had hardened our hearts and bought more. Amongst other things we bought some soznis, which are large and very handsome pieces of embroidery work, and we were told that every girl in Bokhara was expected to finish one of these before her marriage, I suppose as a proof of her industry and practical ability. Occasionally a small piece of the work remains still unfinished, which is supposed to be a proof of its genuine character, as it is also supposed to be a proof of the faith of the bridegroom in the good qualities of the bride, and a proof of her attractions, in that he was willing to forego the completion of the task in his eagerness to possess his bride. Any- how, it was a great pleasure to us to meet Dr. Spooner and his friend, Mr. Hargreaves, and we hope one day to meet them again. From Peshawar we went to Kawul Pindi, where we were hospitably entertained by Colonel and Mrs. Williams, who had invited us to stay with them there. We were pleased to find Mr. and Mrs. Simpson also staying in the house ; they had been shipmates with us on board the Marmora. We had a very pleasant drive through the park DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 65 here, which is picturesque and well laid oat, and I was interested in visiting the Government farm, and even more BO in going round the different forts, and hearing many details of their armaments and plans for defence ; and I must not forget to mention the courtesy which we received from Captain Bruce. Our next stopping-place was at Agra, where we found ourselves most comfortably lodged at the Hotel Cecil, receiving the greatest civility and attention to our every want. I shall not attempt to describe the Fort, to which we went accompanied by Syed Vikar Ali and his brother- in-law the latter having been over to pay his respects to us as we passed through Delhi nor the lovely Moti Musjid, nor all the wonders of this delightful and interesting place. I shall content myself with saying that, far from being disappointed, as we feared that we might be after hearing so much about it, with the Taj Mahal, we found it far more lovely than we could have conceived possible, and it is a beauty that grows upon you and fascinates you. Every time we revisited it or saw it from a distance, we admired it more and more. It is indeed a gem of architecture. I was delighted at Agra to have the oppor- tunity of meeting many native gentlemen, intro- duced to us by Syed Vikar Ali, and to hear their opinions upon a variety of subjects. They were 66 INDIA OF TO-DAY most courteous and polite, and anxious to give us all the information in their power ; and one of them added to his kindness by sending us a complete luncheon, which consisted of a variety of curries and other dishes, which were excellent, and the simplicity of the preparation was delightful. When we returned from our drive at luncheon-time we found the cook sitting outside the hotel, surrounded by little pots and pans ; and no one who has not tried it would believe what a capital meal he turned out with these simple appliances. Just before luncheon I received a visit from the Rajah of Pindrawul, who kindly invited me to go up and shoot on his property; but, unfortunately, in this case, as in so many others, we were obliged to refuse from want of time. We had the pleasure of meeting Sir Walter Colvin, K.C., here, one of the most distinguished barristers in India, and a relation to Mr. Colvin, who had shown us so much kindness and hospitality at Ajmer. From here we proceeded to Lucknow, leaving the train for a few hours when we got to Cawnpore. We drove to the scenes of the horrible massacres perpetrated by the infamous Nana Sahib, a Deccani Brahmin, who, although really very well treated by the British Raj, cherished a grievance against the Government, and claimed, not only the wealth of the late Peishwa Baji Rao, who had adopted Nana Sahib DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 67 as his son, but claimed Baji Eao's pension also. The Government, with great liberality, allowed the whole of the property to pass to Nana Sahib, but very naturally disallowed the pension. At the time of the Mutiny, when the sepoys had risen, and were already on their way to join the rebels at Delhi, Nana Sahib persuaded them to return to Cawnpore and attack their own officers, with their wives and children there. We all know what followed. Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was in command, collected his officers, with the women and children, in some deserted barracks, and defied the rebels. Nana Sahib promised a free passage to all if the officers would lay down their arms. The officers would have cut their way through the enemy, or died in the attempt, if they had not been hampered by the women and children. As it was, they thought that their only course was to accept the terms offered. Boats were provided on the Ganges, and on these they all embarked. No sooner had they left the shore than Nana Sahib directed the sepoys to fire on the defenceless occupants of the boats, and all the men were killed outright, or brought on shore, bound, and murdered in cold blood. The women and children were shut up in a large building, and after protracted sufferings were deliberately butchered, with every possible accompaniment of atrocious inhumanity which can be imagined, by order of this inhuman ruffian. 68 INDIA OF TO-DAY The bodies of the victims were thrown into a well near by, and over this now is erected a lovely monument, surrounded by a garden, which, in its profound silence and solemnity, provides a fitting resting-place for those harassed souls, and whose pathetic appeal must come home to all who see it. Glad to escape from these sad memories, we continued our journey to Lucknow, where our spirits speedily revived in the genial and cordial welcome extended to us by Mr. Harcourt Butler, the Deputy Commissioner, who with his usual tact and good nature came to meet us at the station. This was one of our most delightful experiences out of very many ; our host and hostess vied with one another in making our stay pleasant and profitable, and from our host, who is one of the most capable and rising of Indian statesmen, I received a fund of information which has been of the greatest use to me ever since. I am glad to be able to record that while I was staying with him he was rewarded for his services by being made Foreign Secretary, and since then has received well-deserved promotion as Minister of Education in the Indian Government, and a K.C.I.E. The services which Sir Harcourt Butler has rendered to Lucknow are innumerable, and amongst other things he has preserved, classified, and secured the perpetuation of all that remains to record the heroism of the British and Indian troops which DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 69 took part in the defence and relief of the Kesidency during the terrible days of the Mutiny. It was a constant source of interest to me to hear him explain the whole details connected with that time of storm and stress, and to be conducted by him over the very scenes which he so graphically depicted. Nor were his energies confined to the tragedies of the past : on the contrary, he had converted the Park, which is now one of the greatest ornaments of Lucknow, from a jungle into an artistic pleasure ground. One instance of his tact I must quote here. He told me that he was about to hold a committee meeting to deal with the prospects of approach- ing famine owing to the partial failure of the monsoon, on somewhat similar lines to that which I have already mentioned at Ajmer. I immediately expressed my regret that it would not be possible for me to be present, as it would improve my knowledge of the working of an Indian district and the provision made to avert a great calamity. He asked me why I considered it impossible, and I replied at once that the fact of a stranger being at the meeting might prevent people from speaking their minds freely, and so cause trouble to him and possible loss in the future. With great tact he suggested that I should go for my usual morning ride at 7 o'clock, but should return earlier than usual. He then first conducted all the business which could be 70 INDIA OF TO-DAY considered private, and having informed the committee that I had spent many years in New Zealand and had some knowledge of drainage and irrigation in Australia and New Zealand, he obtained a unanimous invitation from the com- mittee for me to join them on my return from the ride. This I did, and would not for anything have missed the discussion which followed, and in which I was privileged to take part. Sir Harcourt Butler was greatly and deservedly popular, especially for his tact and treatment of both English and Indians alike. After the meeting he invited all the members to breakfast, and my neighbour was an Indian zemindar who had been educated in England. I was greatly struck by his intelligence and common sense, and by the courtesy of my host was able to continue our conversation for an hour or more after breakfast in his private study, receiving many impressions which have been useful to me in forming my opinion on Indian affairs. It is this sympathy which he feels for India and the Indian people, a sympathy entirely devoid of sickly sentimentality but which lies real and deep in his heart, and the talent for being firm without giving offence, which will, if I am not mistaken, carry Harcourt Butler far before his career in India is finished. I only wish that I had time to go into this delightful visit at greater length, but I can only DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 71 mention briefly our visits to the Eesidency, the Chattar Manzil, the Horticultural Gardens, where the head-gardener, Mr. Davis, explained to us the details of his charge, in which he very evidently took the deepest interest and attained a great success, and the bazaar, where under the able guidance of our host we made purchases which still remind us of that happy time. Our host's hospitality was unlimited, and we have pleasant recollections of his lawn-tennis parties, dinners, and other entertainments where we made so many charming acquaintances that it is impossible to enumerate them here ; but I remember especially one dinner party where we met Mr. and Mrs. Griffin, Mr. and Mrs. Evelyn Wood, the Rajah of Marrnarabad, and others, which was fall of interest and charm for us. The Rajah kindly lent us his motor-car to go out to visit Havelock's tomb, and we were much interested to see it, especially as on the tomb is carved also the name of the late gallant Sir Henry Havelock Allan. Col. and Mrs. de Lisle, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, Col. and Mrs. La Motte, Mr. Jopling, and a host of others com- bined to render our visit one to look back upon with lasting pleasure. It was with very real regret that we found that the time had dome for our departure, and we set off for Benares loaded with a sense of gratitude and with many presents and much invaluable information. 72 INDIA OF TO-DAY The charm of our visit to India was, that with however great regret we parted from one place and one group of delightful friends and acquaint- ances, history invariably repeated itself, and we were received with- so much cordiality that we soon felt at home in our new surroundings. This was the case at Benares. On our arrival we found the Maharaja's munshi with a carriage waiting for us, and were promptly conveyed to Clark's Hotel, where the best of accommodation was provided for us. The rnunshi explained that the Guest House was not available at the moment of our arrival. I may mention that we were entertained sumptuously and were not allowed to pay a single penny when we left, as the Maharaja generously considered us as his guests, and the munshi absolutely refused to let us disburse a penny towards our entertainment. We were in luck in one way in going to the hotel, as we formed the acquaintance there of Mrs. Marshall, wife of the Government archaeolo- gist, who was awaiting her husband's arrival from Calcutta, he having been unfortunately prevented from arriving earlier by illness. However, we spent Christmas in company with Mrs. Marshall and her two children and Miss Lewis quite cheerily, greatly as we regretted that Mr. Marshall could not be with us. The munshi took us in a boat down the river DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 73 past the Ghats, and a fearful and wonderful sight it is. On the banks of the Ganges are many houses belonging to rajas from different parts of the country, it being very auspicious to end your life on one bank of the river ; 'incidentally it may be mentioned that it is just as unlucky to die on the opposite bank. All along the margin of the river are a succession of ghats, i.e. steps down to the water, some of which are bathing ghats, where the pious come to bathe and wash away their sins, frequently making pilgrimages of many weeks to accomplish this sacred rite. At in- tervals are the burning ghats, where the bodies of those who can afford it are carried down and laid upon a vast funeral pile of wood, which is then ignited, and it is rather uncanny to see these funeral pyres in various stages of demolition. Still one cannot, if one has any feeling whatever, fail to revere those who endure privation and hardship in carrying out what they honestly believe to be their pious duty. A pathetic incident that we witnessed was the funeral rite of a small child. The mother quietly got into a boat and was rowed slowly into the stream. Beside her was the body of her baby, wrapped in a white cloth and attached to a heavy weight. Solemnly and slowly the boat made way until, arriving in midstream, the bereft mother reverently threw the pathetic little bundle into the river; the boat silently turned and regained 74 INDIA OF TO-DAY the shore from which it had started, the woman gazing sadly at the spot where the poor little body sank. Not a sign did she make ; she neither spoke nor wept. There was something that appealed to us in this silent submission to fate. The munshi took us also to see the Golden Temple, the Monkey Temple, and the other sights of the place, and then a message came that the Maharaja, hearing that we had arrived, would give us a welcome to his camp, where he was enter- taining a Christmas party for shooting, if we felt inclined to go so far. We did not hesitate for a moment, but gladly accepted the invitation. The following morning we light-heartedly started for the camp at Chakia. Taking the train from Benares we alighted at Mughal Sarai Station, where we found that a magnificent barouche was awaiting us, and that a dak was laid to the camp. Every few miles we changed horses, and soon arrived at the camp, where tents were ranged in regular order with a large mess tent at the end. An excellent luncheon was awaiting us, with every luxury provided, and a large double tent was allotted to our separate use. How shall I tell of the early morning ride on an elephant through the silent jungle before sun- rise, the splendid opportunity thus offered of witnessing the jungle life, which was not at all disturbed by the passage of Hathi, the elephant, of the daybreak with its glorious effects of light and DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 75 shade, of the beating of gongs at the temples as the sun rose, and of the triumphant return to camp with one or more black buck as the result of the shikar. A bath and breakfast and we were off again, this time with thirteen elephants in procession, two being appropriated to the use of the Maharaja and his son the Kumwar Sahib, both of whom are first-rate shots and capital sportsmen ; suffice it to say that we had the best of good times, and again were genuinely grieved to say farewell. We carried with us, however, many trophies of the chase, including a real good sambhur head, and the recollection of a thoroughly enjoyable time in the best of good company, for were we not in the daily society of Mr. Justice and Mrs. Richards and their little son Whitmore, quite a character at six years old, and a delightful child, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, Captain Ferrar, Colonel Leake, and Mr. Ormerod. Presently we were joined by Mr. Baily and his daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, and another sportsman from the Maharaja's other camp a little further on. They brought in fresh stories of the sport they had obtained, includ- ing bear and panther, so we never had a dull moment. Before we were at last obliged to take our leave I had a long conversation with the Maharaja and his Minister, and had a fresh opportunity of judging of the capacity for ruling, the foresight 76 INDIA OF TO-DAY and the shrewd common sense of the responsible Indians, and especially of the rulers themselves. Now I am in a dilemma. Owing to my political and other work, the publication of this book has already been too long delayed and I have to decide whether to incur further delay or to cut short the narrative of our personal tour in India. I have decided on the latter course. It is very tempting to me to add to what I have already written. I should like to tell of our stay at Calcutta, where as guests of Lord Minto, the Governor-General, I had the advantage of meeting all the most influential people, whether they were Ministers or Heads of Departments, men dis- tinguished in the Law, in Art, in Commerce. The kind reception and the hospitality which we enjoyed at the hands of the Viceroy and Lady Minto will remain indelibly impressed upon our memory. I should like to tell of our visit to Darjeeling and our view in perfect weather of the eternal snows and the mighty peaks of Mount Everest and Kinchinjunga, of our tour in Burmah, when we ascended the Irrawaddy river to Bhamo some 900 miles from its mouth, of Rangoon with its marvellous pagodas, of Mandalay, where we owe a debt of gratitude to Major and Mrs. MacNab, and the miles of teak forests and lovely river banks, but time will not permit me to do so. I must, however, briefly describe our stay DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 77 in Madras, where we proceeded by sea from Eangoon. Sir Arthur Lawley, a relation of mine, was Governor of Madras and was as successful there as he had already been in the army and as Governor of Rhodesia. We had a splendid time in Madras, where we were most hospitably entertained by Sir A. and Lady Lawley, who did everything possible to make us happy and comfortable, and they certainly succeeded in doing so. We saw over the Fort and old town with much interest, and we had lawn-tennis, polo, and every sort of enter- tainment, and we were fortunate in meeting the Cunards again, Gordon Cunard being Lady Lawley's brother. We spent a few days very pleasantly at Secun- derabad, where Mr. Pendlebury, the chief of the Nizam's State Eailways, provided us with the best of sport and entertainment, and then proceeded to Bangalore, where we were the guests of the kindest of hosts and hostesses, the Kesident, Mr. Fraser, and his wife. Sir Arthur Lawley had furnished us with an introduction to the Maharaja of Mysore, who very kindly showed me over his Palace and grounds, and knowing that I was fond of horses, he had them all out for me to look at and also sent us over to his breeding stud, where he had many excellent horses. He also asked us to a ball at the Palace, which was magnificently well done 78 INDIA OF TO-DAY and where I was fortunate enough to meet a very old friend, General Frank Atkinson, whom I had known from early boyhood and who now held a command in Bangalore. The Maharaja arranged a camp at Ambligola, and here I shot my first tiger and had a most enjoyable week. The Maharaja had sent up tents, and horses, carts, and cooks, and we had any amount of the best of food and wine and fruit and, the greatest luxury of all, plenty of ice, which adds so greatly to one's comfort in a hot climate. Altogether we owed an immense debt of gratitude to Sir Arthur and Lady Lawley for providing us with the opportunity of enjoying so much sport and entertainment ; and their staff, especially Major Geoffrey Glyn and Captain Duff, were unswerving in their efforts to make us comfortable. Of the Maharaja's kindness I cannot say too much, and I hope that if he ever reads these pages he will realize how the memory of all he did for us is still vividly impressed on our minds. I wish that I was able to describe at length all the incidents of our camp life in detail, but want of time forbids. We left Mysore with great regret and travelled through the Western Ghats by Poona to Bombay, where we arrived thoroughly pleased with the success of our tour through India. As soon as we arrived we were carried off to the Grahams' hospitable house, and had much to tell them of all DESCRIPTIVE OF TOUR 79 our travels and experiences. We dined at Govern- ment House, and the first question they asked was, " Did you do all you set out to do, and did you kill a tiger ? " I was able to answer in the affirmative, and to assure them that not only had I done all that I set out to do, but a great deal more than I had thought would be possible in the time, and that I owed an immense debt of gratitude to them for their send-off and to all the kind friends who had helped us on our way. I must say here that had it not been for the kindness of Sir Walter Lawrence, who had been private secretary to Lord Curzon, and had then arranged the tour for the Prince of Wales, and who having this experience gave me the benefit of it by laying out a similar tour for my guidance, and of Col. Sir James Dunlop Smith, private secretary to Lord Minto, who took the greatest interest in our tour and gave himself infinite trouble to make our way smooth, we could not have done half what we did or done'it half so comfortably and pleasantly. I wish to offer them both our heartiest and most grateful thanks. Whether or no I one day write of the delight- ful days in Burmah and all the incidents in our camp life in Mysore and the Muharram Festival, etc., etc., must depend upon the reception which this book receives at the hands of the public. If they are kind enough to receive it well and desire that I should write more, it will be my greatest 8o INDIA OF TO-DAY pleasure to meet the demand; but if I fail to please them, I can only say that the writing of this book has been a great pleasure to me in recalling many pleasant scenes and many valued friends. CHAPTEE II STRIKING CONTRASTS DENSITY OF POPULATION LANGUAGES AND CASTE HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS SUCH then was the tour which we accomplished with such interest and which we recall with so much pleasure. In its course, we learnt many lessons from direct observation, from discussion and conversation on the spot, which no amount of study could have enabled us to grasp, to realize in a living sense. And the first and chief of those lessons that which must be the basis for every consideration of Indian affairs and the problems of Indian administration is this : that, actually, there is no such thing as India. As far as the word India has or can have any meaning, it has such as applied to the Central Government which in one unifying purview observes and controls the operations of the sub- ordinate administrations. India exists, if it does exist, only because we British have given that vast continent one Central Government, one finance, one army, one system of justice, and for the educated classes one supplementary common language the English language. But in any 81 a 82 INDIA OF TO-DAY deeper, in any more real sense, the word India is as much or as little explicative of a country or a nation as the word Europe. That group of countries which is ruled by the Government of India consists of tracts imme- diately and directly subject to the Crown and administered by the officers of the King, aggregat- ing in all 1,097,901 square miles. Interspersed among these regions of direct British activity, lie various semi-independent States, some six hundred in all, if those of small importance be included, States which acknowledge the sovereignty of the Crown of England and are in certain respects subjected to the delegated authority of the Viceroy, but which are internally ruled and administered by their own hereditary chiefs. Their position in relation to the Crown is analogous to, though not identical with, the position of the German States in relation to the Emperor. These States in turn cover an area of 675,267 square miles. The total area under the Indian Govern- ment is therefore nearly 1,800,000 square miles. Those vast regions are inhabited by 315 million inhabitants, of whom 245 millions are the direct subjects of the Crown, while 70 millions owe allegiance to their native chiefs. Of this vast total only 12 millions belong to Burmah. 303 millions are therefore included in the continent of India proper. Figures so enormous so far overtax the human DENSITY OF POPULATION 83 imagination that the consequence involved may not very readily be followed. But their significance may be more easily understood if these figures be compared with those of the populations of England, Scotland, or Ireland. Let that comparison be made and it is at once apparent that under no circumstances could so large a population be homogeneous or so vast an area free from divergence. The force of this consideration is, however, heightened by other conditions peculiar to the Indian continent. The student is early surprised by the unprecedented variation in the density of the population. And this variation is the more striking that it is obvious, not merely in the comparison of village with village or county with county, but that it holds good even for a comparison of tracts as large as many a European country. It would be useless to heap figures upon figures and tire the attention with aimless repeti- tion. It may be enough to state that, while there are regions in Bengal in which the density of population is over one thousand per square mile, and while there are regions in Rajputana and on the frontier where there is barely one inhabitant per square mile, there is over one-sixth of the whole of the vast province of Bengal a population of six hundred per square mile, while through the whole of the large territory of Baluchistan the number of inhabitants per square mile is only eleven. The diversity of religion over this enormous 84 INDIA OF TO-DAY area is another of the obvious facts which very early strikes the traveller. Its significance may perhaps be measured by the consideration that Christianity is, along with and even more than our priceless heritage of Eoman law, the cause which has given what uniformity there is to Europe, or in the fine old-fashioned phrase, to Christendom. Europe proper is throughout almost entirely Christian. In India 217 millions adhere to the social rule known as Hinduism, but 66J millions are followers of Islam, 12 millions are Buddhists and Jains, 10 millions are worshippers only of ghosts and spirits, nearly 4 millions are Christians, and 3 millions are Sikhs. Let it be considered for a moment to an extent how vast and how important the mode of thought and fashions of life of humanity are shaped, how deeply and significantly their every action is conditioned by their religious beliefs, their thoughts on good and evil, life and death, freedom and immortality, and the necessary divergence in habit, custom, thought and action between these many sections may be, however faintly, to some extent, realized. Take into account further that Hinduism is not a body of dogma, but a social system, and that the cardinal tenet of that social system is a division into castes, some eight hundred in all, who cannot eat with, marry with, or, in most cases, sit with or even touch each other, of whom for certain castes it is pollution even as of death to come within a few LANGUAGES AND CASTE 85 yards of each other, and it will be seen that even the two hundred millions of Hindus are divided laterally by caste as well as vertically by distance, that not even for them does religion provide a unity such as, in spite of differences of language and region, of sect and dogma, the Englishman and the Italian, the Spaniard and the German find in a common Christianity. That human thought for all men in most cases and for most men in all cases, is formed and modified by the language in which it is expressed, that sympathy and understanding are possible only between those who own a common language, has long been a commonplace among philologists and philosophers. In the confines of Europe are found about a dozen principal languages, the most im- portant of which are so nearly akin to each other that very close translation is in many cases pos- sible. Within the limits of India, on the other hand, there exist and are spoken no less than 185 languages, derived from various mother tongues. No less than thirty of these deserve to be reckoned as principal and important languages and are each spoken by over a million persons. The infinite variety of the peoples and castes that inhabit the Indian continent is further substantiated by the history and ethnology of that dominion. History begins in India with the Aryan con- quest of the Punjab, the land of the Five Eivers. These Aryans were allied to the Persians, 86 INDIA OF TO-DAY were a light-complexioned people, energetic and courageous, intellectual and civilizing. Settling mainly in the north-west of India, they gradually succeeded in extending their sphere of influence to the east and south. These Aryan invaders had acquired the name of Hindus from the river Indus, where they originally settled. But they afterwards invaded the valley of the Jumna and the Ganges, extended as far east as the borders of Bengal, and south to the Deccan and to Madras. Thus, although the Bengalis in the east, the Gonds of Central India, the Mahrattas of the Deccan, and the Telugu, Tamil, Kanarese, and other Dravidian peoples were originally of entirely different race and religion from the conquering invaders, yet by degrees these races adopted the Hindu system and all came to be known by the common appellation of Hindus. The process of absorption into the Hindu social fabric may still to this day be observed in the case of aboriginal forest tribes like the Bhils or Santhals. To preserve that right of exploiting subject races which is commonly regarded as the privilege of conquerors, partly perhaps to maintain their own higher cultural level, the Aryans gradually, as their numbers grew even in the outlying provinces, restricted the right of intermarriage with the original inhabitants and devised the system of caste which has remained so distinctive a feature of the HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS 87 Hindu world. Primarily they divided the social organism into four classes, the Brahmin or sacred caste, the Kshatriya or fighting caste, the Vaisya or merchant and farmer caste, and the Sudra or menial caste. The last consisted of the original inhabitants with but little admixture of the superior race, the first three of the conquering race with more or less tincture of the aboriginal blood. Intermixture there no doubt was every- where, and even the Brahmin could not with truth or reason boast of unmixed Aryan descent. But no doubt the two higher classes kept themselves comparatively aloof from legitimate intermarriage with their subjects, whether of aboriginal negrito, of Dravidian or of Mongolian blood. In many cases, however, the indigenous aristocracy succeeded in winning recognition themselves in the course of time as Kshatriyas and even as Brahmins. We eventually emerge from these legendary times to the period when the Punjab, after being a satrapy of the old Persian empire, under Darius and Xerxes, was invaded by the Greeks under Alexander the Great. This invasion does not, however, seem greatly to have affected the structure of Indian society previously established. It remained to be further confused and its com- plexity augmented by the next invasions, which took place mostly from the fourth to the sixth centuries after Christ. The land was again over- run by races from the West, of Scythian, of Tartar, 88 INDIA OF TO-DAY and even apparently of Greek or Hellenistic descent. White Huns and Yavans overran the Punjab and the north-west of India, penetrating even into the mountains and fastnesses of Central India, ravaging capitals, upsetting dynasties, devastating the established civilization, and introducing new complexities of race and custom. When the veil of history which drops over 'these devastations is again lifted the conquerors are found assimilated in the Brahminical system. New castes have been created, and new invaders absorbed in the old castes. The Brahmins have been recruited from the priests of the invaders, some of the proudest divisions of the modern Brahmins are the descendants of these Scythian hordes. The Kshatriyas have been replaced by the Rajputs, mainly, the scions of the leaders of the incoming armies. The distinction between the upper castes of mingled Aryan, Scythian, and Tartar blood, and the menial castes of aboriginal or Dravidian blood has, however, widened instead of diminished, and the bonds of caste have been riveted more firmly and tenaciously. At the present day the castes have largely ceased to depend upon occupation, but their distinctions are maintained with no less pride and religious observance. The Brahmins, originally priests, may now follow many different professions, and in fact do largely fulfil all intellectual duties or appointments. Still, however, they retain HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS 89 their position as the highest caste. The Kshatriyas are represented by the Rajputs, but not all Rajputs are rulers or soldiers. The Vaisyas and Sudras are commingled in the great middle and lower class of India, divided into innumerable sub-castes and extending over all trades and professions. To give you an idea of the pride of race which still animates the Indians, and keeps the various races distinct, I may mention that the Rajputs claim to be descended from the Sun through their Divine ancestor Rama, who was an Avatar of the Sun, and who was the hero of many warlike adventures. Amongst others, when Rama's wife Sita was carried oft by Ravana, the King of the Demons, and shut up in a fortress in Ceylon, Rama formed an alliance with Hanuman, the King of the Monkeys, who brought huge rocks from the Himalaya mountains, some thousands of miles distant, and hurled them into the sea, thus forming a causeway between India and Ceylon. Ravana, the Demon King, was slain, Sita was rescued by her husband, and Rama was restored to his throne and kingdom. We hear of many legendary battles and exploits, of splendid courage, and of basest treachery and ghastly massacres. Finally, the Punjab was conquered by the Mohammedans in the eleventh and twelth centuries of the Christian era. Mohammed, himself an Arab, was born at Mecca A.D. 570, became the prophet and leader 90 INDIA OF TO-DAY of the Arabs, and waged war on all who refused to adopt the religion which he taught. His successors were the Caliphs, and the Arabs under their rule becoming more and more powerful conquered North Africa, Spain, Syria, Persia, and Central Asia, and finally invaded and conquered the Kajputs on the Lower Indus. The Mohammedan conquest was inspired by religion and consequently Mohammedan conquerors were zealous for the destruction of Hindu temples and idols, and the conversion of the Hindus to Islam. Thus the antagonism between the Hindus and the Mohammedans is not of recent growth but dates back for many centuries. The siege of Chitor is a fair instance of the earnestness and ferocity of the contest in those days. The Mohammedans, under Ala-ud-Din (Aladdin) laid siege to Chitor for twelve years. At last the Rajputs could hold out no longer, so the whole of their wives and children committed Sati, i.e., offered themselves voluntarily to the flames on one large funeral pyre, while the men old and young charged out to die, sword in hand, or escape to the Aravalli mountains. The Rajputs were driven to the fastnesses of Rajputana, and the Mohammedans passing on to the Deccan waged war with the Hindu Rajas in the Deccan and Peninsular for the next two hundred years ; these wars being remarkable for some of the most blood- thirsty struggles and most ghastly episodes of HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS 91 assassination and massacre ever recorded in history. The purpose of this short sketch of ancient history has been to emphasize how even from that point of view it stands out as an essential fact that, instead of India being a nation as we under- stand a nation, it is a continent inhabited by many diverse races with widely different languages, customs, traditions and religions. In order, how- ever, to continue the review of history up to the present day, let us very shortly trace the beginning and growth of our Empire in India. It was in the days of Good Queen Bess that certain London merchants were anxious to secure a share of the trade with the East Indies which was at that time entirely in the hands of the Portu- guese and the Dutch. And how do you think that our direct trade with India began ? Why, simply because the Dutch, who held the monopoly of the sale of pepper in London, doubled the price and charged 65. instead of 3s. per lb., which so enraged the London merchants that they imme- diately formed the East India Company in 1599, obtained a Charter from Queen Elizabeth for a monopoly of the trade between England and India, and founded factories at Surat and Hooghly. Times were hard, however, and when disputes arose between the Company and the Moghul the factories were surrounded by armed Indian troops, and the unfortunate agents of the 92 INDIA OF TO-DAY Company were starved into submission. Con- sequently, in 1639, the Company founded the factory of Madras in Hindu Territory outside the influence of the Great Moghul, and presently started other factories at Bombay and Calcutta. These were known as the three Presidency Towns, each was head of .a group of factories and each was defended by a strong fortress mounted with guns, and the whole was ruled by a Governor and defended by a small garrison. Our trade was carried on under strenuous con- ditions in those days. The English settlements had to resist attack after attack from the natives, and on one occasion Madras was captured by the French, but was brilliantly recaptured by Clive. Calcutta was reduced to still more desperate straits, for being attacked by the Nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-daula, the English fought des- perately for five whole days, and were then obliged to surrender Fort William. The prisoners, 146 in number, were thrown into a small stifling hot barrack cell, known as " The Black Hole," and left all night. In the morning all were found to be suffocated except twenty-three, who were brought out more dead than alive. Clive again came to the fore, re-captured Calcutta, and in June, 1757, he utterly defeated the Nawab at the famous battle of Plassey. So time went on, and the English through much tribulation, in spite of wars and massacres, held doggedly on, and gradually HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS 93 extended further, their influence ever gaining ground and consolidating their hold on the country not a policy of aggression, but because one incident after another forced fresh respon- sibilities upon them. Thus, by degrees, the greater part of India came under our beneficent rule, and peace and prosperity were found to follow the British flag, till just when all seemed well, the terrible Indian Mutiny broke out, 1857. There is no need to retell the story of the Mutiny and its suppression, or the fuller incorpora- tion of varied races or provinces into British India. Enough has perhaps been said to display that fact, the full understanding and recollection of which is essential to any grasp of Indian problems, the fact, namely, that India is not a country, but a continent, containing a congeries of peoples or countries, and that each country is divided and subdivided by difference of religion and of caste. Further instances could be accumulated. Law and custom, habits of life, dress, speech, manners, culture, all in turn, if examined, tell the same story. Yet this is a fact habitually overlooked not merely by the authorities who tour for six weeks through India under the guidance of a political cicerone, but even by men who appear to have spent years in India without ever meeting any one except a few Calcutta lawyers. CHAPTER III INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE PROVISION AGAINST FAMINE EFFICIENCY, ENERGY, AND INTEGRITY PASSING from our personal experience in India, I should like to consider the present economic condition of India, and the criticisms which have been passed upon the Indian administration. No one who has travelled through India with his eyes open, and with an impartial mind, can have failed to be struck by certain broad facts, namely : the enormously increasing prosperity of the country under the present administration, caused by the security to life and property, the certainty of im- partial justice in the English Courts, the opening- up of the country by roads and railways, the great extension of the systems of irrigation, and the protection to life afforded by the splendidly- organized system of providing relief in case of famine. As soon as it is known that the Monsoon is likely to fail, i.e. months before famine can become acute, meetings are called by the official responsible for the Government of the district. At such a meeting, not only the English and Indian officials, 94 FAMINE RELIEF 95 but also non-official Indian gentlemen are con- sulted as to those who will stand in need of relief. The measures required to combat famine, the relation of wages to prices, the tasks to be exacted from men and women, boys and girls, the duties devolving upon various officials in a famine year, have now been codified in the large and detailed famine codes of each province. It remains to the head of the district, under the advice and con- trol of a special commissioner and the ultimate guidance of the Government itself, to select the measures of relief especially suitable to his district, to fix the dates of applying those measures, to provide the necessary sums for expenditure in good time, and to select the programme of relief works. It is also his duty, by patient and in- cessant supervision, to check any tendency to corruption on the part of subordinate native officials, and to secure the efficient, punctual and sympathetic accomplishment of his orders. Every village is taken into consideration, and the kind of work suitable for the inhabitants is discussed. Gratuitous relief is arranged to be given to those who, from age or infirmity, are unable to work, and finally, such works are determined as will not merely afford relief at the time, but prove of permanent benefit to the locality. Belief works, according to the need of the district, may consist of a few large camps of several thousand workers engaged upon building 96 INDIA OF TO-DAY a new road or a railway or excavating an irriga- tion tank, or in completing some similar large work from the permanent programme of public works; or they may consist of numerous small works engaging a few hundred labourers from neighbouring villages on the cutting of forest, the building of small dams, or the performance of similar tasks useful to the village community. Each work is under an officer in charge varying in importance with the size of the work from the village headman or a junior clerk to an officer of the rank of magistrate and executive officer of a subdivision. The works are under constant supervision by travelling inspectors, as is also the distribution of gratuitous aid to the aged and infirm. With the failure of the crops the land taxes of the cultivators are also either remitted or sus- pended, according to the severity of the loss, the Head of the District being responsible both for valuing the loss and for the regular accounting of these remissions and suspensions. Further enormous sums of money are at once distributed as loans to the more respectable and solvent cultivators, partly to enable them to increase their irrigation or preserve their cattle, to buy seed or to lay in a stock of hay, partly in the hope of thus indirectly securing employment for the destitute. These loans are repayable in instalments varying from two to ten and even INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE 97 twenty years according to their magnitude and purpose, and bear interest at 5^ or 6 per cent. When this branch of our administration be com- pared with the havoc wrought under former dynasties by a crop failure, I think it must be agreed that its splendid organization is a real monument to British rule. The next great fact which prominently forces itself upon one's attention is the efficiency, the energy, and the magnificent self-devotion of every member of the Indian Civil Service, from the highest official in the country to the latest-joined recruit in this splendid army of keen and con- scientious workers for their country and the Empire. Carefully trained and gradually ad- vanced from one post to another, each post carrying with it a greater responsibility than the last, the Indian Civil Servants stand out pre- eminently distinguished for their self-reliance, their resourcefulness, their cheerful self-sacrifice, their knowledge of the subjects with which they have to deal, their real, though not weak or senti- mental, sympathy with the Indian people, and, above all, their absolute disinterestedness, their impartiality and their undoubted and unquestioned integrity. Under the most trying circumstances, in the hot weather, or in the rains, up country, or in their office, they uncomplainingly and patiently do their work unceasingly and efficiently and are always ready to listen to any complaint of hardship 98 INDIA OF TO-DAY or injustice, and to put matters right immediately to the best of their ability. In any reforms this fact should always be borne in mind, and whatever we do we must be careful not to impair their useful- ness, not to distrust, still less discourage an over- worked, and by no means over-paid, body of workers, but rather strengthen their hands in carrying on and extending the great results which they have already brought about in the vast area of the Indian Empire. It is to be hoped that the Public Services Commission now sitting will make re- commendations of a kind to restore the popularity of this service among young men of the class most suitable for the task from their up-bringing, their efficiency, integrity and ability who formerly devoted their lives to the task, and of whom so many are available in England at the present time. It may be as well here to devote some space to a description of the manner of administration and its influence as a moral factor on the country. In India the unit of administration is what is known as a District. A District is a territorial division, in almost every case based upon some historic, racial and geographical grounds, which is in itself self-subsistent and which is, with certain limitations, under the rule and guidance of one officer. The essential feature of a District is this unification of its administration in the hands of one man an officer known either as Collector or as Deputy-Commissioner. The position of this DISTRICT OFFICERS 99 official may, in some respects, be compared to that of a Lord-Lieutenant in Tudor times. But the comparison is imperfect, inasmuch as his duties are on the one hand far more complex and far more detailed than those of the ancient Lords-Lieutenant, while on the other hand he is devoid of military authority and subject to the centralized control necessarily introduced by a scientific system of legislation and by the modern post and telegraph. He still remains, however, subject to certain limitations of recent years, the head of the District and its administration in all its manifold depart- ments. Over the collection of revenue and the assessment of taxation he exercises, subject to the limitations of the Statute Book and the right of appeal, complete and final control. He is the head of the criminal magistracy, as far as crime can be dealt with in magisterial courts. He is the nominal head of the Police and influences their work in its more important branches very closely. He is responsible for peace and order, and is the source whence nearly all recommenda- tions for honours and rewards arise. He ad- ministers the District Treasuries, subject to the control of the central Accountant-General and draws up the annual budget for the District. He supplies funds for and advises as to the allotment of grants for education and his assistance is required by the Local Educational Officers for the extension of schools and scholarship. ioo INDIA OF TO-DAY All forest measures pass through his hands and on all non-technical matters he has a final voice, subject to the general control of the central Secretariat. Over certain matters relating to the Public Works Department he exercises final control and the local engineer, as well as the Government Medical Officer, regard him in some respects as their superior and chief. In fact, it may as a whole be said, that the head of an Indian District has an influential or a preponderating voice in every department except in the military and purely commercial departments of the ad- ministration, such as the posts and telegraphs, and except in certain technical departments and the Judicial Courts. His importance as the social head of the District can hardly be over-rated, and to the Indian inhabitants of the District he is the representative of the Sovereign and the fountain of good and evil. These officers are subject to the control of Commissioners, who should be inspecting and controlling officers over five or six such District officers. All in turn are under the authority of the Local Administration, which may be finally embodied either in one Lieutenant -Governor as in the United Provinces or the Punjab, or in a Governor appointed from England and two Members of Council belonging to the Indian Civil Service as in Bombay and Madras, but which in either case is actually exercised in the majority of DISTRICT OFFICERS 101 instances by a Secretariat or Central Government Office, consisting of various departmental officers, some secretaries from the Civil Service, and an army of native clerks trained in the Secretariat. The Local Governments again fall under the control of the Government of India, a Government consisting of a Viceroy and certain members of Council, who are appointed partly from England and partly from India, and of a large Secretariat. For legislative purposes, the Central as well as the Local Administrations are aided by colleagues elected or nominated for that end only and by the District Officers' reports. The present Government has, however, shown an unfortunate fondness for autocracy by extend- ing the control of the Secretary of State over the Government of India, and by insisting upon the sub- ordination of the Viceroy in even the most trifling routine of administration to the Minister in charge of the office in .Whitehall. India even heard, with astonished indignation, an Under Secretary in Parliament speak of Lord Morley's administration. The direct control of the Secretary of State over the Viceroy, strengthened and emphasized in a hundred ways, was further aided by a system which reduced the independence of the Viceroy's Council. Membership of that Council used to be and ought to be the final culmination of an Indian civilian's career. With his pension assured, the recipient of all the honours likely ever to befall a 102 INDIA OF TO-DAY Civil Servant, at the highest point of dignity and responsibility, the Member of Council should be absolutely independent and unswayed by any con- sideration of future prospects. But in recent years this salutary rule has so often been departed from, that the converse is almost true. Member- ship of Council has now been made a stepping- stone to appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of a Province. Such appointment lies virtually in the hands of the Secretary of State. It follows, therefore, that a Member of Council who expresses his views with independence and resists the dicta- tion of a Secretary of State is extremely unlikely to attain the further honour that is dangled before his eyes. At each moment he is confronted with the dilemma either to sacrifice his duty and his knowledge to the whims of a doctrinaire in London or to lose that promotion to which he has been taught to aspire. This system has been violently attacked for the last seven years since it was abused by the present Government by every responsible newspaper in India. But popular opinion, when it cannot affect British votes, has little chance of being heard by a democratic Cabinet, and the system still persists with all its resultant evils to the administration of the continent of India. From this summary of the manner of admini- stration, it will be apparent that the Government of the King-Emperor can exercise influence upon DISTRICT OFFICERS 103 the people, in relations which may roughly be called moral as opposed to material, through the character and personality of the head of the District, through the personal influence of the Lieutenant- Governor, Governor or Viceroy, by the legislation introduced by the Legislative Councils, and by the executive orders given by the Secretariat to the heads of the Districts. From the nature of the case, it follows that the last influence will be mainly negative. Secretariat orders can easily limit the powers, and with them the influence of the District Officer. They are in the last degree unlikely to increase his influence or themselves to operate on the sympathies and imaginations of the people. The effects of legislation are in- directly of importance as statutes condition the social and administrative relations of the people to government. Directly, their influence is again mainly negative and it is obvious that their imaginative appeal must be especially curtailed in a country where only one in two hundred of the male population can read English and where the vast majority of the inhabitants appreciate only the word of personal command, and have none of that respect for abstract law which we have painfully and laboriously derived from the Romans. The personal influence of Viceroys, Lieutenant- Governors and Governors is enormous where it can be exercised, but is necessarily re- stricted in scope. It is confined mainly to the io 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY higher aristocracy and to the educated classes of the metropolis. The' one channel, therefore, by which influence can be and is exercised to any great or constant degree upon the thoughts, habits and actions of the people of India is through the head of the District, the Collector or the Deputy- Commissioner. By the prescription of innumerable centuries, by a vast volume of history and tradition to which our administration has succeeded, the Head of the District has represented to the subjects of the Crown in his District the final word of authority, the resolution of the Sovereign, the decree of destiny. Even now it is with the greatest difficulty, and it may be added with extreme reluctance, that they accustom themselves to the idea of a different civil jurisdiction. In every other department they come to him as to the final authority and they utterly disbelieve him if he says that he cannot control an Engineer, a Forest Officer or a Policeman. There are in India 267 such Districts. In most cases such a District is also a unit of judicial administration, and is, for the purpose of civil justice, under the control of one judge aided by many subordinate judges. As a matter of fact, however, in certain of the more primitive portions of India known as Non-Eegulation or Scheduled Districts the judicial functions also are exercised by the Head of the District, while in other cases DISTRICT OFFICERS 105 two or more executive Districts form one judicial unit. There are on this account only 217 Civil Court or Judicial Districts as compared to 267 Executive Districts. In the Districts, again, the control of much of the administration of the larger towns is in the hands of municipalities, while other departments of the local administration such as the construc- tion and repair of local roads, the sanitation of villages, primary education, water supply, etc. are controlled by local boards, both for the District as a whole and for sub-divisions of the Districts. Both the municipalities and the local boards are largely elective on a limited franchise. Both, however, are in a considerable measure under the control of Government, exercised not as in England by inspectors from the Local Government Board, but by the Head of the District in person. They form a recent, but on the whole a wise, though hardly a congenial, extension of self-government. Their limited franchise, however, which restricts the municipal suffrage to only a few of the richer middle-class which, in some cases, leaves the municipal destiny of 10,000 persons and an income of Ks. 15,000 to less than 100 voters was hardly a prudent or a popular step. It is probable that a more extended franchise would add to their somewhat doubtful popularity among Indians, while it would certainly diminish the already enormous influence io6 INDIA OF TO-DAY of the one class which tends at times and seasons to be disloyal or disaffected. This being the outline of the administrative system, it becomes possible to understand one of the causes which underlies what there is of present discontent and which was in my mind when I insisted that no reform should be attempted which could impair the utility of the Indian Civil Service; that rather reforms should seek to strengthen their hands in carrying on and extending their humanizing duties. For it is well to remember that we stand face to face with a social system older than our own, with a varied population of every creed and every mental standard, some of them rude as the wildest savages, others with a spiritual civilization of extraordinary depth, idealism and self-renunciation, and that we govern for their benefit and towards the general perfecting of humanity. While, therefore, we shape our course towards an end inevitably limited and defined by those conceptions of good and evil, of progress and humanity which we derive from a philosophy flowing from Plato and Aristotle through centuries of intense cogita- tion to Hegel, Green and Bradley, and from a natural science extending from Heraclitus to Darwin and Weissman, it must yet be our aim in choosing the road to select the paths most suited to Eastern steps and to adapt the means to the environment. DISTRICT OFFICERS 107 Now there can be no doubt that under the influence of exaggerated ideas of abstract individualism and by the excessive creation of centralized departments, the power and influence of the District Officer has gradually been lessened to a dangerous extent, to an extent which is largely responsible (and especially in Bengal) both for the desire for sedition and its opportunity. A powerful Commission has recently returned its report on the possibilities of arresting the course of centralization, of devolving powers upon the local officers, and of simplifying administrative procedure. Much was to be hoped from that report, which is still under consideration. But the growth of depart- mentalism has been recent and rapid, and it may be that the recommendations finally adopted will not cut sufficiently deep or sufficiently deal with the allied but divergent questions that go to make sympathy between the governors and the governed. And unhappily until now the Government has shut its ears to the authoritative recommendations of the Decentralization Commission. The pernicious and corroding process by which the District Officer has been stripped of his powers by the Central Secretariat and reduced to the position partly of a mere Revenue Officer and partly of a routine clerk must be finally mended and ended. To accomplish this several steps are neces- sary. One is the summary stoppage of the present practice by which men who have spent their lives in to8 INDIA OF TO-DAY Secretariat offices without district experience are by favour or nepotism endowed with the highest appointments of the State. There is at least one Local Government where most of the last Revenue Members of Council have been men who earned their promotion by a life spent in clerical work at a bureau and who had barely come into contact with a real un- Anglicized Indian. It can hardly be matter for wonder that, after at least twenty years of such guidance, a famine in that Presidency resulted in the loss of thousands of lives through the incompetent interference of the Secretariat, and that its Revenue policy called for Lord Curzon's severest animadversions. It should, I think, be definitely laid down that no officer should under any circumstances be an Under-Secretary for more than two years a rule still broken at present in spite of Lord Curzon's pressure and that a man serving more than five years in the Secretariat altogether should thereby be disqualified from promotion as a Member of Council or as Commissioner. Secondly, the clerical staff employed in the Secretariats should be considerably diminished and severely limited. Thirdly, the departmental advisers of Government should as strictly as possible be confined to the function of advising the head of the Local Govern- ment on departmental questions submitted by Heads of Districts, and should, as far as possible, be shorn of any power of corresponding direct with DISTRICT OFFICERS 109 departmental officers in the Districts except on points of the most technical routine. On the other hand, as the excuse for Secretariat and departmental control lies in the incompetence of certain Heads of Districts, it should be a rule strictly laid down and strictly adhered to, not that, as the present theory is the practice is even less incompetent men be passed over for promo- tion as Heads of Districts, but rather that no one shall be appointed to that most important post unless he be proved to be fully competent. Any financial hardship caused by such a rule could easily be obviated by giving men passed over additional allowances according to seniority in addition to their grade pay. The consequent benefits would be cheaply bought at such a price. Again but this would automatically follow from the reforms already mentioned competence should be measured by a standard different from that employed in recent years by reverting to the practice of the golden days of British rule in India before the age of excessive departmentalism. Sense of responsibility, initiative and indepen- dence of character, knowledge of the language and sympathy with the native, these are the qualities to be rewarded, not, as I am informed is too often the case at present, pliability, indifference, inert submis- sion to Secretariat guidance and conformity to the ideals of the station-club and the hill-top coterie. The former were qualities easily learnt by an no INDIA OF TO-DAY earlier generation, and still shown in plenty by the political officer whether civil or military on the frontier and by the administrators of non-regula- tion Districts. Under the reformed regime of examination for the Civil Service, under which men of twenty-two to twenty-three are selected, mainly from the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge, it can hardly be doubted that the qualities are still latent. But they are warped and atrophied by the system. A young man of thirty to thirty- five, at an age when some of his University con- temporaries are Governors of Colonies, Members of Parliament and forces amongst men, is confined to inspection duties which in England would be performed by a junior subordinate, and has his spirits fretted and worn by exclusion from all duties of real importance. He is generally taught to see in pliability, in the even and uninterested performance of routine tasks, and in a character for amiability and conventionality, the surest pass- ports to promotion and official favour. After twelve to fifteen years of such training he is thrust into the charge of a District, of whose administration he is acquainted only with one department and for whose conduct he has gradu- ally lost the essential qualities. It is an expensive and a mischievous waste of good material, and it gives no scope for testing the abilities or the com- petence of the individual. That the Civil Service, in spite of these recent defects in training, is still DISTRICT OFFICERS in able to maintain its traditions of integrity and ability, is due to the men and to the country, but must not blind us to these defects. Again, it is obvious that for the administration let alone the sympathetic administration of a people, ninety-nine and a half per cent, of whom know no English, a full and thorough knowledge of the language used in the District in which the officer serves, is absolutely essential. It will hardly be credited in England that, in recent years, this condition has been largely lost sight of. Officers are for the first ten or fifteen years of their service tested in the language of any District to which they are appointed, but the tests have often been so easy as to be farcical, and it not infrequently happens that an officer passes the test without being able to frame a single really intelligible sentence in the course of conversation. Moreover, the examination being in itself farcical, it is by no means unknown for examiners to make it more so by favouritism. Everyone is acquainted with cases in which officers were passed, who could, even in the laxest examination consistent with an intention of adhering to the principles of examination, by no possibility have been passed. Again, although there are in the Civil Service regulations certain provisions entitled for the encouragement of the study of Oriental languages it has been an incontestable fact that except in the political service which Lord Curzon so greatly ii2 INDIA OF TO-DAY improved the study of such languages is not only not encouraged but is 'positively discouraged. An officer who studies them is set down as a pot- hunter, and as being necessarily lazy in regard to his routine duties. The leave allowed for the purpose is steadily refused him and his depart- mental fortunes are marred. Those who, under this regime have studied an Indian language to the minimum needed for the performance of their duties not the minimum required, which is quite a different thing have done so, not in the hope of reward, but either from love of their work and the people, or with a dim hope that somewhere in the vague future the present prejudices will cease and their merits then be recognized. It is a curious and interesting fact that two of the ex-officials who have so bitterly criticized that British administration, for which Lord Curzon's acute eye saw them to be unfit, are men who are unable properly to talk a single native language, and men who owed their previous promotion solely to the demerits of our Secretariat system. It must be admitted that in the last two years the Govern- ment of India has been endeavouring to introduce a better system ; but no modification of rules will avail until the Local Governments are forced to recognize proficiency in languages as one of the most important factors in all special or even routine promotions. It will be seen from the above that in recent LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 113 years during a period largely corresponding with the late system of recruitment for the Civil Service, and a period in which in consequence Radical ideas and want of sympathy with Oriental thoughts prevailed our administration has, by faults of administrative detail, by centralization, departmentalism and disregard for Indian tradition, Indian feeling and Indian speech, gradually been growing out of touch with the people. The fact is incontestable, and is regretted by the best of English officers not necessarily the most highly- placed and of Indians. It has been seen that a great improvement can be effected by decentraliz- ation, the devolution of powers, the recognition of the importance of the office of Collector or Deputy- Commissioner and the insistence on an intimate knowledge of the languages required in each District, on sympathy with native ways and on courage in supporting responsibility as certificates for promotion. There is also considerable room for improve- ment, in one of the most important, if not the most important, branches of the District Officer's work the guidance and control of local self- government. It is obvious that in the fostering of local corporations and in the close contact thereby occasioned with the leaders of local society and intelligence, the District Officer has opportunities for good and educative influence which are almost unlimited. It is difficult to i u 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY imagine a more congenial task, to anyone who liked Indians, spoke the language freely and was interested in the moral progress of the country, than by wise and agreeable discussion and friendly co-operation to improve local amenities, nurture the infant spirit of self-government and secure the cordial support and loyalty of his native colleagues. It is with great pleasure that we have in one of the latest of important promotions seen this spirit in an official for once recognized. But, unfortu- nately, a view of the general operation of the action of local self-government displays the very reverse. To some extent this may be due to the fact that the District Officer may not be always competent, to a larger extent it is probably due to the evil traditions in which he received his training, but chiefly it is again due to the pernicious effect of the Secretariat. Under the present Secretariat system, the District Officer's work on such Boards is wholly ignored. He is not required to give up any serious time to it, nor is his work properly scrutinized. He knows, therefore, that he will receive no credit if it be well done, and no blame if it be done badly. On the contrary, he is fully aware that his reputation depends on his satis- factory performance of sundry petty and much less important inspections and reports. Those inspections take up so much time that he has little leisure left for the really important work LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 115 connected with Local Board and Municipal administration. It is little wonder, therefore, that he nearly always neglects the spheres of work in which he might exercise a really important and valuable political influence, and toils at a dull routine on which his future career will, under the Secretariat system, depend. The general neglect under which local self- government has lain is shown also by the variation of system followed. Thus in 1910-11 there were in British India 196 District Boards and 520 Local Boards subordinate to them. In addition to these there are nearly 500 Union Committees, which are Boards with less power. In the North- west Frontier Province these Boards have had no elected members since 1904, a condition probably justifiable by the comparative barbarism of these tracts. But the Madras Presidency is one of the most advanced and Anglicized in India, yet only 10 per cent, of the members of its Local Boards are elected, the rest being nominated by the local officials themselves. In the much less developed Central Provinces and Berar, on the other hand, 71 per cent, of the members are elected, while in Bombay nearly half are elected. It is difficult to discover anything in the circumstances which justifies a variation by which in Madras one elected member sits among ten nominees, while there are three elected to one nominated member in the Central Provinces, and in Bombay their u6 INDIA OF TO-DAY numbers are equal. If anything, one would have expected the figures to vary in the contrary direction. Again the numbers of Boards seem to bear no ascertainable relation to the population, capacity, or development of the areas which they serve ; it is at least difficult to conceive any intelligible reason for the United Provinces having only 48 Boards, the Punjab 46, and the Central Provinces 99, while Bombay has 237 and Madras has, including Union Committees, no less than 496 Boards. While Madras Local Board administration is in other respects probably the best model, in point of membership, the Central Provinces system appears likely to appeal most strongly to the spirit of the times. But in any case it is clear that the figures point to neglect of a most important political factor ; and no reform of the administrative unit will be complete which does not ensure a fuller use of the political influence for good secured by a carefully organized and well-administered system of Local Government. The administration of the Municipalities, or Urban Boards, presents similar inexplicable anom- alies, and it can hardly be doubted that here too there is great need of improvement, which should be obtained both by settled and revised principles of finance, taxation, and membership being examined and confirmed by the Central Government, and also by far more rigorous insistence upon the District Officer's responsibility and initiative. CHAPTER IV GREAT PREPONDERANCE OF RURAL OVER URBAN POPU- LATION INDIAN VILLAGES EFFECT ON LEGISLA- TIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES RAPID INCREASE OF POPULATION. BEFORE reaching the detailed consideration of the grievances alleged to call for redress in India and of the actual or possible reforms, it is perhaps as well to emphasize two points which struck us very forcibly by the light of actual observation on our tour. They are points whose full significance it is essential to grasp before any correct view of Indian conditions can be expected. They are the relation of urban to agricultural population and the number and importance of the so-called educated class. Only by actual travel, perhaps, is it possible to realize how enormously agricultural interests preponderate in India, and on the other hand, how very small a percentage of Indians have any acquaintance at all with the English language or with the concepts of Western education. In all countries and in all ages the form of 117 n8 INDIA OF TO-DAY government has depended upon and has been conditioned by the growth of cities and the relative temporary importance of town and country life. The growth of municipal life in England has always been one of the most signi- ficant concomitants of political change ; and the fact should be obvious that institutions suitable to a centralized and specialized society congregated for industrial and professional purposes in large towns are extremely unlikely to be well adapted to races engaged in agriculture and dispersed in small communities over wide country areas. When the Indian Continent came under the rule of Britain, city life in the Western sense was altogether unknown. What cities existed were fortuitous conglomerations round a monarch's or a viceroy's seat. To this day in British India in spite of the rapid and remarkable growth of ports and emporia like Calcutta, Bombay or Kangoon, and of industrial centres like Hyderabad, Cawn- pore or Howrah 91 per cent, of the popu- lation is wholly agricultural and lives in the innumerable villages of the land, and only 9 per cent, is urban. In the feudatory States 12 per cent, of the population is urban and 88 per cent, is agricultural. Of the total again one-third lives in villages, the populations of which do not exceed 500 souls. The rapid multiplication of the population in the pacified and tranquil India which we POPULATION AND INDUSTRIES 119 administer, is of all problems the most difficult and most urgent. The worst horrors of war, of famine, the outrages of gang-robbers, assassins and Thugs, have been mitigated or abolished under British rule. The various causes which in former times operated to check the prolific tendencies of the peoples of India have been counteracted or annulled. In the period of thirty years from 1881 in spite of the ravages of pestilence and the severities of the almost unparalleled famine of 1900 the population of British India increased by nearly 45 millions. To provide for the maintenance of this constant increment, it is obvious that the advance and improvement of industries and the consequent augmentation of the urban population is requisite. It is therefore no little matter for congratulation and no small compliment to our administration that the last thirty years have seen an unprecedented growth in the larger towns of India. The following are striking figures, which do not seem to support the pessimistic views of certain critics. Since 1872 the population of Kangoon has increased by 182 per cent., Karachi by 166 per cent., Madura by 147 per cent., Howrah by 111 per cent., Lahore by 79 per cent., and Ahmedabad by 79 per cent. Of the other conditions which must necessarily affect the form of administration in any country, one of the more important is obviously the educational level of the inhabitants. In India 120 INDIA OF TO-DAY the question is for various reasons some of which will be dealt with at greater length in the sequel of particular interest. The bitterer critics of our administration habitually speak as if that continent were inhabited by a large and re- presentative educated class, clamouring for popular representation and democratic self- government. In particular, an energetic effort has for years been made to represent the province or provinces of Bengal as the educational pioneers of India, and their inhabitants as cultivated studious citizens, yearning for an era of political equality, in which the interests of all classes should be safeguarded by free discussion between their representatives. One of these critics, who, although a former official, seems to be lacking in the robust good-sense which is the usual fruit of an Indian civil servant's training, goes so far as to speak in a book on Lord Curzon of the educated Indian as being the only Indian whose opinion is worth conciliating. And it is sometimes suggested that Bengal is the one portion of India which leads in education and progress. Now the facts are these. Leaving aside the female population which for various reasons lags very much behind in India as far as education is concerned in British India (in 1901, the latest year for which census figures are so far available) out of 117J million males only 12,200,000 were able to read and write, while in the Native States EDUCATIONAL ACQUIREMENTS 121 only 2J million were literate out of nearly 32 million males. Of the above only 900,000 and 117,000 respectively knew any English. It follows, therefore, that the "educated class,' ' which is alleged to desire and require represen- tative government and to be fitted for a democratic constitution that class, in other words, which has studied English to some slight extent formed in 1901 scarcely 1 in 200 of the total population of India. When individual provinces are examined, the results are, if possible, even more striking. A long way the best educated province is Burmah. In that province in 1911 over two million males or 37 per cent, of the male popula- tion is literate, while in Burmah proper the figure attains 45 per cent. Then follow Madras with 13| per cent., and Bombay with 12 per cent. Yet in Burmah only 67,000 persons know any English, while in the other leading provinces mentioned only between an eighth and a tenth of those who can read and write know English. Hence in the most advanced province, only 1| per cent, of the male population knows English while in the most literate of all less than,one per cent, know English, or in other words have learnt more than the mere rudiments of learning. And it must not be for- gotten that those results, small as they are, represent the results of fifty years 1 unceasing effort for the expansion of learning and the extension of education. 122 INDIA OF TO-DAY These figures can also be regarded from another and thoroughly Indian point of view. The " educated classes" come with very few exceptions from three Hindu castes out of some 800, viz., Brahmins, Banias, and Kayasths. The total population falling into these castes amounts to 20 millions, or about one-fifteenth of the whole. If what has already been said, first, as to the in- conceivable division of interest and life occasioned by caste distinctions, and secondly, as to the opposition of religious beliefs, be borne in mind, it will readily be understood that the educated class even if they were really representative of the three castes from which they are mainly derived would certainly in no sense be represen- tative of the other castes and religions of their country, or even of their district. The average English District Officer is a far better representa- tive of the diverging interests of the millions under his charge than the average " educated Indian. " Again, the " educated class " is practically entirely urban, and belongs, with few exceptions, to the learned professions, especially to the profes- sion of law, which is peculiarly congenial to the temperament of the three writing castes just enumerated. Now, while there are 200 million persons in India who are supported wholly by agriculture, there are only 1,694,000 workers at the learned and artistic professions.* * Latest census figures available are for 1901. EDUCATIONAL ACQUIREMENTS 123 On all these counts, then, it will be seen that our administration of India has been conditioned and must be conditioned by the actual facts ; that the " educated class " in India in no province exceeds lj per cent, of even the male population, while on an average it is only slightly over per cent. ; that this class is unrepresentative on the characteristic caste basis which is the immovable framework of Indian society ; and that it is equally unrepresentative both in point of habitation and occupation. The reader is now in a position approximately to measure the heights of nonsense attained by one writer when he says: "The lawyers are the representatives of the great native landlords and merchants. " Even this writer how- ever, has not had the audacity as some others have had to call them representative of the vast agricultural millions of the country or of the fighting castes, the Punjabis, the Sikhs, and the gallant Rajputs. CHAPTEE V THE PARTITION OF BENGAL WE are frequently told that there are great grievances in India which need redress. I propose now to take these allegations in detail and investigate their real truth or weight. The most sensational of these alleged grievances and that which has lately been the ostensible occasion of the most serious agitation, even unhappily to outrage and murder, was that of the partition of Bengal. Let us take the real facts of the case. Their examination will, I trust, show that the measure was in itself justified and necessary, and that though it may have been the occasion for the free display of sedition by a discontented class, it could not by any possibility have been the cause of this discontent or that sedition. Owing to England's beneficent rule, which provided security for life and property, Bengal has flourished, trade has prospered, wealth has accumulated, and the population greatly increased. Consequently the province of Bengal had be- come too large to be administered efficiently by a Lieutenant- Governor, residing for the most part 124 THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 125 in Calcutta ; and the outlying parts contiguous to Assam had become more or less neglected from want of a sufficient staff to give adequate attention to the needs of the whole province. They were also in danger of being unable to make improvements and to advance in many ways for the want of their fair share of the provincial funds. Therefore it became necessary for the purpose of good govern- ment that a subdivision of this unwieldy province should be made. It cannot be too clearly stated and understood that the necessity of some subdivision of the overgrown province of Bengal had for years by all competent authorities, and is even now by the bitterest opponents of Lord Curzon's scheme, ad- mitted and allowed. As early as 1857 Sir J. Yule, in the course of an official memorandum dealing with the subject, in recommending the reduction of the size of the province, wrote as follows : " There is a want of life in the Bengal administration system, the proximate cause of which is the absence of any close or intimate knowledge of the people on the part of the officers This absence of knowledge is a feature of the Bengal system. Civilians looked to the good name they acquired with the heads of the only two departments that required attention the High Court and the Revenue Board as the means of their own promotion to the high offices in question. 1 ' It may also be noted that Sir Henry Maine in 126 INDIA OF TO-DAY the same year enunciated the unhappy truth which after-generations have so bitterly learnt and which so many points in the present paper have illustrated, that "it is a fact that every- thing in Bengal is wholly uncharacteristic of India. . . The greatest mistakes which the British Government of India had committed were, in my judgment, committed under the influence of the Native opinion which is the production of these peculiarities of character of the educated Bengali/* The evils of the Bengal administration, resulting very largely from the size of the province which rendered vain all efforts at amelioration, are again characterized by the Government of India as follows : " The work of government has come to be less personal than in any other administration. This is worst of all in a province where already, owing to the existence of a permanent settlement, that link of close knowledge and mutual under- standing between the District officer and the people is wanting. There, where personal rule is most required, there is least of it, and where the officers know least of the people, the Government knows least of its officers." It is, then, not astonishing that the two ex-civilians who so prominently identified themselves with the agita- tion conducted to such extreme and outrageous lengths by the educated middle class of Bengal should be officers trained in the worst adminis- tration of India, promoted only on account of the THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 127 Departmental and Secretariat system which had there attained its worst limits, and personally further handicapped by that ignorance of the native languages in which they vie with each other. On all sides, then, the necessity for some partition was admitted. The one question at issue, then the question on account of which some have had the audacity to say that a peaceful and loyal class has become malevolent, criminal, and nihilist that question which has prompted the weapons of assassination and the bomb that question was merely this : Whether the size of Bengal should be reduced by the separation of Bihar and Chota Nagpur or by the separation of the districts of Mymensing, Dacca, and Chittagong. The bare statement of the question at issue at once refutes the pretence that the recent sedition of a class has been produced by the partition. The truth is that the disloyalty was there and that the partition was merely the excuse which led to its premature explosion. For it must of course be further borne in mind that the transfer of those districts from one administration to another in no way altered or curtailed their laws, rights, privileges, or duties. As, however, the critics have professed and I think it can soon be shown falsely and in bad faith professed that the former division was preferable, it may be well briefly to examine the 128 INDIA OF TO-DAY conditions which led the Government of India to decide upon the latter. Adjoining Eastern Bengal was the province of Assam, which was too small to have a permanent service of its own, and had no port to provide for its independent development. The fact is that three matters called for settlement and not one, as pretended by the opponents of the measure. The first was the improvement of the adminis- tration of the province of Assam, the second the reduction in size of the then province of Bengal, and the third the improvement and unification of certain Uriya districts. Now the first two questions were already in 1900 of equal importance. In a few more years the improvement of Assam would have become considerably the more im- portant of the two. The measure taken was, therefore, in reality not one merely for the partition of Bengal but rather for the re-arrange- ment of the Eastern Provinces of India. It appeared, therefore, to be clear that the separation of Bihar and Chota Nagpur even if the consider- ations affecting these districts alone could be treated as negligible would still have left un- touched the question of Assam. Now Assam had for some years been adminis- tered as a separate administration by a Chief Com- missioner. Too small, however, to be self-supporting, its services and administration had been recruited by temporary loans of officials from Bengal. Thus THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 129 the province was not only administered by officers trained in the worst and most unsuitable adminis- trative school of India, but further, suffered from the fact that their service was only temporary and that their interests were confined to Bengal. To a large extent it was looked upon by officers as a punishment station. Its small size only 56,000 square miles and its restricted population of little more than six millions, brought other disadvan- tages. They are briefly but sufficiently summarized in a letter of the Government of India. " In our opinion it is to its contracted area, to its restricted opportunities, to its lack of commercial outlet, to its alien services, and to the predominance in its life and administration of a single industrial interest, depending in the main upon imported labour, that the parochialism of Assam is due. It requires territorial expansion in order to give to its officers a wider and more interesting field of work. It requires a maritime outlet in order to develop its industries in tea, oil and coal." The severance of Dacca, Mymensingh and Chittagong from Western Bengal and the constitu- tion of the new province of Eastern Bengal at once solved the problem of Assam and eliminated the former difficulties which were strangling its growth. It had the further advantage of improv- ing the administration of these districts of Bengal which most required the improvement. For there was no part of Bengal where the drawbacks of an E 1 3 o INDIA OF TO-DAY imperfectly supervised administration were more evident than in the outlying districts of the Eastern border, those very districts which were taken as the nucleus of the new province. No- where else was the absence of close and intimate touch between the officers of Government and the people more apparent and more regrettable. The separation of Bihar and Chota Nagpur would have left the more important problem of Assam unsolved. It would not have contributed to the improvement and development of adminis- tration in Eastern Bengal. Further it would have caused a real, and not a merely imaginary, in- justice to the people of these districts. For, while the capital of the new province was central and easily reached by the people of Dacca, Mymensing and Chittagong, the transfer of those two districts would have entailed upon their inhabitants the long journeys and unending de'tours necessary to reach the capital of the Central Provinces. Those districts were practically inaccessible by any direct route from the Central Provinces. Moreover their very important commercial interests all lay with Calcutta, and their transfer was very strongly opposed by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce on account of the valuable mining and industrial interests involved. And the administration of the Central Provinces was unable to cope with this without extensive and expensive enlargement. The scheme adopted by Lord Curzon's Govern- THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 131 ment answered all administrative requirements and completely solved the problems of Bengal and Assam involved. The concession to popular sentiment granted by Lord Curzon of maintaining the jurisdiction of the Calcutta High Court over Eastern Bengal removed the one possible ground for real objection, and met the criticisms advanced by that High Court in 1896 to a former proposal to lower the judicial status of certain districts. The geographical effect of the measure was to reduce the area of Bengal proper by 48,000 square miles and its population from 78^ millions to 54 millions ; while an Eastern Province was consti- tuted embracing 106,540 square miles and a popu- lation of 31 millions with a self-subsistent and coherent administration. Obviously, the best plan under the circum- stances then existing was to take the course which had been adopted, and which divided the former province into two convenient sections, and gave to Eastern Bengal and Assam an efficient administra- tion of their own, with a convenient port at Chitta- gong, and which restored the ancient city of Dacca to its former position as capital of the province, with its Government offices, and its Law Courts, its warehouses and its residential houses, instead of crowding all the administration and the busi- ness as heretofore in the port and town of Calcutta. Clearly one would say that this must be to the ad- vantage of everyone concerned, but, not unnaturally i 3 2 INDIA OF TO-DAY perhaps, some of the larger landowners, who had hitherto been more or less absentees from their properties, and had maintained large houses in Calcutta, objected to the necessity of building new houses in Dacca, and many lawyers who found it convenient to do the business of the province in Calcutta, did not like having to attend the Law Courts in Dacca. And there was furthermore a certain jealousy on the part of some of the residents in Calcutta who thought that some of the trade of that port might be diverted to Chittagong. Still, I maintain that this was decentralization of the right kind, and to prove how great had already been its success the follow- ing extract from the Times may be read with interest. " The * partition ' of Bengal is one of the many benefits conferred upon a vast Indian popula- tion which we should never have been able to bestow upon them, had ' the policy of extending the elective principle been accepted with all its consequences," in the old province. How valuable have been the results which that change has already produced, and how full it is of promise for the future, may be seen from the facts recorded by our Special Correspondent, in the instructive and thoughtful r article on the subject which we print to-day. The province of Eastern Bengal and Assam has become animated by a new spirit of progress and of hope, from the ancient Eastern capital of the Moghuls at Dacca to the remotest THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 133 country village, since it has ceased to be ad- ministered together with the districts about Calcutta, and, of course, in their interests rather than in its own. Almost all classes rejoice in the reform. There are exceptions, no doubt. The great Hindu landowners who prefer the ' luxury and ease ' of the capital to life on their neglected estates bitterly resent it. So do the Hindu lawyers, who apprehend that the inevitable establishment of a High Court will lessen their business and their fees. So, too, do the Hindu agitators, who are in close relation with both, whose ranks are largely recruited from them, and to whose finances they contribute. But the Civil servants, who see a chance at last of raising the moral and material condition of the masses of the people, the merchants and the traders, the millions of peasant cultivators, and the whole body of the Mohammedans, numbering some eighteen millions of souls, exult in the good that has been done and in the good that they foresee. Perhaps the greatest benefit that the Government could confer upon the cultivators is the preparation of a survey and of a record of rights in the zemindari tracts. That was planned before the partition, but it is now being pushed forward with renewed energy. It is a good illustration, like that furnished by Lord Northcote in Thursday's debate, of the kind of changes for which no sympathy is to be expected from the average Hindu politician. These men are i 3 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY for the most part lawyers, and, as Lord Northcote truly said, 'they represent but an insignificant minority of the people.' " There is one other objection which was fre- quently put forward by the Bengal agitator, viz. : that the partition was made in order to break up the Hindus of the province into two sections, and to favour the Mohammedans. It has been alleged that Mussulmans and Hindus in Bengal were, prior to this Act, on the most friendly and unanimous terms, and that to quote one writer " Hindus would welcome the appointment of Mussulmans to their full share in administrative and judicial offices.' 7 To any one who knows India the falsehood is too absurd for anything but laughter. A perusal of the Sind Press from day to day gives a thorough insight into the fierce jealousy and bitter hatred which prevails amongst the followers of the two systems. As for the relations of the two creeds in Bengal, reference to a petition from the leading Moham- medans of Sirajgang enclosed in the papers relating to the reconstitution of the province of Bengal and Assam will show that these Mussulmans asked for the establishment of an independent Moham- medan school, because of the ill-treatment experi- enced by their boys at school, and because the masters punished their boys when they refused to take part in political agitation. It is, I think, undoubted that the eighteen THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 135 millions of Mohammedans who are included in Eastern Bengal and Assam would have benefited by the better administration of the province, while they undoubtedly felt that they had been unfairly treated before. I have no hesitation in saying that before the last Durbar the agitation had died down, in spite of the attempts of political agitators to keep it alive, and that the Hindus, no less than the Mohammedans, were conscious that they would have derived immense benefit from this altogether useful and necessary administrative reform. Before passing on to the later developments of the subject, some of the misstatements, made by those who favoured the unfounded agitation so harmfully waged, though they hardly deserve the honour of serious notice, may just be mentioned. It has been said, for instance, that the High Court in 1896 objected to the scheme. We have already seen that no such scheme or anything similar was before them, but that in that year they did object to an immature scheme for altering the judicial system and the body of the laws administered in certain districts. The same disingenuous authority has again stated that Sir Bamfylde Fuller con- demned the scheme. This inaccuracy of statement is too gross to be excused by any plea of bond fide ignorance. The truth is simply that Sir Bamfylde Fuller followed the course adopted by every com- petent Government servant in reporting upon a scheme, that, namely, of pointing out the 136 INDIA OF TO-DAY arguments for and against the scheme. Nowhere did he suggest that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages, and the disadvantage which he emphasized was precisely that which the agitators would naturally desire the danger, namely, of the interests of Assam being subordinated to those of the transferred Bengal districts. It has been again suggested that practically the whole of the Bengal Civil Service was against the scheme. The truth is that the senior Bengal officers were, with hardly an exception, in favour of the scheme as finally sanctioned; and this, though one of the admitted objects of the measure was the reform of the inherent weaknesses and administrative faults of that very Bengal service. The real reason why three ex-officers were so strongly opposed to the measure is inadvertently let out by one of them in a book which he published. It lies simply in the fact that Lord Curzon with that acute sagacity and keen judg- ment of men which is one of his most remarkable characteristics passed over these officers with their Bengal training and appointed two distin- guished officials from other provinces to the new provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal. The real, but unavowed, motive for the agitation of the intellectual middle class in Bengal was their fear that the improved administration of the severed districts, and their union with other districts in which a Mussulman population preponderated, THE PARTITION OF BENGAL 137 would limit the scope of their political propaganda, impair the artificial political solidarity of that class, and diminish the influence which they simulated to the bureaucracy of Calcutta. But the measure was one which left the rest of India entirely indifferent, which was welcomed by the Mussulman population throughout Bengal, which had the approval of the Bengal aristocracy, and which the working populace passed unnoticed. Had there been that representative Government of India, which the agitators profess to desire, had even the representation been confined to the money- lending and lawyer class whose suffrage they alone contemplate, then, indeed, the measure might have been defeated in a Bengal assembly, but it is certain that it would have been accepted by any chamber elected for India as a whole, by any chamber in fact, that would have regarded, as a Government of India must, not merely the interests of one province, but the progress and advantages of Indian ad- ministration in its broadest and highest sense. That partition of Bengal, which had been thus improperly attacked and which even a Liberal Government had pronounced to be settled for all time, was summarily modified during the con- tinuance of the same Liberal Government by the proclamation of the Sovereign at his Coronation Durbar. In view of the manner of announcement criticism is difficult. It need only be said that the partition made by Lord Curzon was in no way 138 INDIA OF TO-DAY whatever reversed upon its merits. On the con- trary, the modification that has taken place can only be regarded (and was so regarded by Govern- ment) as a compensation for another step taken by the King-Emperor, namely, the removal of the capital of the Indian Empire to Delhi from Calcutta. That the step was compensatory for the removal of the capital is expressly stated in the Government of India's despatch of August 25th, 1911, and in Lord Curzon's reply of the 1st November, 1911. In both these State papers it is admitted that the removal of the capital and the reactionary administrative changes in Bengal were indissolubly linked together. This great and expensive step was one which Lord Curzon could not, of course, contemplate, and which no Parlia- ment would have sanctioned : it was a step possible only in the peculiar circumstances of the late Durbar. But it must be remembered that when it was taken the agitation about the partition was already stone-dead. And, moreover, it is a fact that the reversal of Lord Curzon's scheme has caused serious dissatisfaction among the Mussulmans of Eastern Bengal, while, in spite of its new Legislative Council, Assam must lose very considerably by being again under a Chief Com- missioner. It can only be hoped that the partition will have had the permanent effect of drawing real attention to the needs and disadvantages of Eastern Bengal. CHAPTEE VI LAND REVENUE ANOTHER subject on which our administration has been attacked is that of Taxation, and chiefly of that peculiarly Oriental form of taxation which we have taken over from our predecessors, which is known as Land Eevenue. The full significance of this particular direction of criticism is difficult to bring home to Englishmen, because all the conditions relating to the questions are unknown to England, or where they resemble the circum- stances of this country, have nearly always the directly opposite force. The allegation made is that the British Govern- ment collects a land revenue larger than is justified by the crops, ruinous in its operation, and crushing in its weight. It is even alleged that this land revenue is the direct cause of famine. It is asserted that were this land revenue made lighter and fixed in perpetuity the country would suddenly become enormously more prosperous, and im- poverishment would disappear. What, then, exactly is the Land EeVenue ? Throughout Asia the land has always been held to 139 140 INDIA OF TO-DAY be in the ultimate ownership of the Crown, and the Crown therefore took from the farmer or peasant to whom it assigned each field a rent proportionate to the profits of that field. This rent is land revenue in its simplest form. A complication, however, crept in under all native governments because of the fact that, owing to the general shortage of coined money, the Crown frequently rewarded its faithful servants by assign- ing to them the Crown rents derivable from certain villages for one or more generations. In such cases the presentee took the place of the Crown in fixing and collecting rents, but paid a certain other rent to the Crown in exchange for this right. This rent paid by the superior holder or landlord is land revenue in its second or derivative form. These two meanings of land revenue do not by any means exhaust all the forms under which rent is paid to the Crown in India. In Rajput countries there are feudal fiefs, in the Punjab there are proprietary communities, and there are various minor forms. But the two just mentioned are the principal and most general forms which land revenue takes in India. On the one hand it may be the rent paid by an actual farmer or cultivator to the Crown direct, on the other, it is a quit rent paid by a superior holder or landlord who in turn occupies in relation to the cultivator the position normally and originally occupied by the Crown. If for the moment the Kajput feudal fiefs LAND REVENUE 141 and certain of the analogous Talukdari Estates of Oudh be omitted from consideration, it will be seen that in general in India the land is genuinely nationalized, and that the rents payable for its use are in the first instance and in the simplest form of tenure directly payable to the State. With the same exceptions, the landlord where there is one is not a landlord in our English sense, but is a mere assignee of certain portions of the rent ordinarily payable to the State. The landlord, with the exceptions already mentioned, recognizes no duties to the tenants of the village or villages assigned to him, does not as a rule even reside in the village, and confines his relations to them to the mere collection of rents. He is in fact, as a general rule, a farmer of taxes in some form or other. It follows, therefore, that the question of the amount of land revenue to be collected must be approached from two entirely different points of view, and that any confusion of the two is illogical in thought and inequitable in practice. Where the State deals direct with the peasant, it is obvious that its aim must be the collection of a fair rent, and a fair rent only, and that it should be guided more or less by the sound principles on which a good landlord fixes the rents from his tenants. Where, however, it deals with a middle- man assignee of rents, it is obvious that, after paying him a fair remuneration for his trouble in 142 INDIA OF TO-DAY collecting rents, every penny besides which is left to him is so much unearned benefit given to him. The only limitation on what should be taken from him of the rents already collected by him must depend on considerations of his position, of previous custom, and of the political advantages of the existence of this class. It is clear that these considerations will vary in different portions of the country. Now it is important to notice that the critics of our Land Kevenue system all belong to the " educated " class, who, in one way or another, belong to the classes which are middlemen in land. They are either themselves the descendants of assignees of rent, or they are usurers who have acquired peasants* lands by sale or mortgage, or attorneys who have obtained similar rights in the course of their practice. In most cases they belong to the last two classes, usually to that of attorneys. Now it is obvious that, to such persons, it is to their monetary interest on the one hand to collect as large rents as possible from their tenants, the actual peasants, on the other hand, to pay as small a proportion of this as possible to the State. If the value of the produce of a field be 10, the landlord benefits more if the tenant pays him 6 as rent and ,2 for transmission to the State, than if the tenant pays 4 to the State and 4 to the superior holder. But it is clear that to the tenant LAND REVENUE 143 or peasant himself it makes no difference whatso- ever, except for the fact that the more he pays to the State and the less he pays to the mortgagee, the greater the benefit he derives in exemption from other taxation and in the advantages of good government, such as education, improve- ments of communications and so on. Hence it has resulted that the criticisms directed against our Land Eevenue policy have from the first been vitiated by hypocrisy and insin- cerity. The actual but unavowed object has been for the " educated " class, the moneylender and the attorney, to diminish the dues which they have to pay to Government, while leaving them free to take from the tenant all that they can by any means exact. But that class has fully realized that, in the absence of that so-called representative government, for which they pine, such a statement of their case, though truthful, would not appeal to the English administrators who still control the destinies of the country, and who naturally have for the good-natured, kindly, and honest agricul- tural classes a sympathy very different from the aversion with which these classes are regarded by the " educated " Brahmins and Banias. Hence they purposely confuse the issues and profess to believe that the rents Government exacts are oppressive and exorbitant, whether from peasant or from revenue farmer. Before me is a pamphlet written by a member 144 INDIA OF TO-DAY of Parliament, who is also an ex- Government official in India. In* considering it we must always bear in mind the two systems of collecting Land Revenue in India. On one side, as for instance in Bombay, Madras, etc., the Eyotwari system obtains, under which the Eyot, or actual cultivator of the soil, pays Land Eevenue ; in other words, the rent of his land goes direct to the Government as landlord. In the other case, as in Bengal, etc., the Zemindari system is in vogue, under which the Zemindar collects the rents from the Eyots, and pays a certain fixed sum per annum as revenue to the Government. The Zemindar frequently farms land on his own account, but derives his income principally as the go-between of the Government and the Eyot, the Government being still the ultimate landlord. It is very necessary that these facts should clearly be in our minds when we are considering the pamphlet under our notice at present since it is owing to the confusion of the two systems that the false deductions of the following para- graphs become possible. The pamphlet was written in May, 1907, when the then Parliament had been in existence for considerably more than a year. In this pamphlet we are told that the Indian cultivator is reduced to partial, or total, starvation by the extraction of 50 per cent, or more of his net assets per annum. " The net assets," LAND REVENUE 145 we are told, " mean the annual profit after paying costs of cultivation the income in fact of the farmer." Yes, but who is the person here styled as the "farmer"? Why! in the Zamindari districts he is the Zamindar, the rent collector, and the Government is not in fact collecting from him half the income that he derives from farming, but is only taking 50 per cent, of the rents which he has collected from the actual cultivator. No one in this country will, I think, say that the Government is exacting an unfair proportion of the rents collected. But what happens in the case of the Ryotwari districts ? First, the Government deduct from the Land Revenue or rent demanded what they consider to be a fair estimate of the cost of cultivation of the land, then the cost of main- tenance of the cultivator and his family, then the cost of seed, keep of live stock, and numerous other etceteras ; and it is only at most 50 per cent., more frequently about 33 per cent., or, in other words, less than half of the clear net profit after all these things have been paid for, that the cultivator is required to contribute to the State. In fact, the total amount is equal on the average to about one-sixth to one-tenth of the value of the gross produce. The following are broad facts which have never been effectively disproved. First, the Land Revenue taken by the British L 146 INDIA OF TO-DAY Government is much lower than that taken by any preceding Government. Secondly, it is lower than that now taken by any Native State in India. Thirdly, it is much lower than the rents taken by private landlords or mortgagees. As to the first point. In historic times, the fairest and lowest Land Revenue taken by any preceding ruler was that fixed by the great Moghul Emperor Akbar. Even he, however, fixed one-third as the usual State-demand from actual cultivators, while in addition the cultivators had to pay for the up-keep of a State militia. In 1793 the share of the produce taken by the Native Government from landlords was fixed by estimating the rents paid by tenants, deducting therefrom the costs of collection, allowing to the landlords one- eleventh of the remainder as their share and appropriating the balance or ten-elevenths as the share of the State. In Native States, again, as a general rule and on most crops, half the gross-produce of his fields is paid by the peasant to the State as his rent. In the case of certain crops, however, he pays three- fifths and even three-quarters of the gross produce ; in the case of others as little as one-third. In addition he pays various cesses or local rates far exceeding anything paid in British territory. Again, throughout India the tenant pays to the landlord as much as one and a half to four times the rent he would have to pay to Government. LAND REVENUE 147 Thus, for instance, the district of Broach is generally supposed to be the most heavily assessed district in British India. In it the cultivator pays to Government an amount which is roughly equivalent to one-fifth the gross produce of his lands, if his lands were sown with food grains instead of the more valuable cotton crop which is habitually grown. In that district is the large estate of Amod, belonging to a Talukdar, a real landlord in our English sense, who lives on his estates, cares for his people, and administers his property himself. Portions of this estate were assessed to Land Revenue by Government officers on the principles obtaining in neighbouring State lands. Yet the landlord habitually readily obtains one and a half times that rent from his tenants. Again, much of the land in that district is mortgaged or sold to attorneys, etc., who let it out on lease to the former proprietors. Their rents commonly run from twice to two and a half times as high as the Government assessment. This instance of the Broach district is taken because, on account of its valuable soil, it is highly assessed and because it is habitually referred to by publicists of the type mentioned as crushed by exorbitant assessments. But it is obvious that in every case where a person, not himself a peasant, acquires land which already pays rent to Government, he must expect at least to derive from the tenant he puts in enough rent not only to pay the State 148 INDIA OF TO-DAY dues, but also to pay him interest on the amount he spent on the purchase and to cover the cost of collection. If, therefore, the charge that our assessments are crushing were justified, no land would change hands and no one would invest in land. Unfortunately for the peasant, the exact opposite is the case. Land is so much sought after by the moneylender that the peasant has had to be protected by special legislation, and that in many places the cultivator has been reduced to serfdom by the moneyed investor. It must be remembered also that the Indian who invests in land calculates always upon obtaining 6 per cent, on his capital outlay after defraying the cost of collection and paying the State's dues. How many an English landlord would gladly double or treble the rate of his income tax if he could get 6 per cent, interest from his estate ! It has, therefore, been established that the Land Revenue is moderate in relation to former ages, to the custom of Native States, and to private rents and the return on capital outlay. The next question is to what in itself it amounts. Where revenue is taken from assignees of rent, or land- lords, the general rule is that in taking the net average profits of each estate into consideration with other data, about one-half of those well- ascertained net profits should be the Government demand. This is high, no doubt, as compared to the English conception of what a landlord should LAND REVENUE 149 pay. But it is low as compared to what the zamindars used to pay to previous rulers, which wo have seen amounted in many cases to ten-elevenths of the profits. And the historic position of these landlords, with the exception of the feudal fiefs which require separate treatment is, as already said, quite different from that of an English landlord. Moreover, under British rule there has been a progressive decline of the share taken by the State. At one time it was the custom for the Settlement Officer to look beyond the actual cash rental and to take into consideration prospective increases of income, and to consider the profits of home-farm cultivation as well as the rental value of home-farm lands. By an abandonment of these claims, the share taken by Government has been brought down in the United Provinces to an average of less than 50 per cent., and in Oudh to below 47 per cent. In the Central Provinces, which have been for a shorter period under British rule, our Government has gradually been reducing the assessments, in some cases amounting to over 75 per cent, of the actual income, which it inherited from the former Mahratta Government. Three of the districts in that province have already been reassessed at less than 50 per cent, of the rental In the Punjab assessments of 45, 39, 35 and 25 per cent, are recorded, and the general average does not exceed 45 per cent, of the net ISO INDIA OF TO-DAY income* In general, therefore, the practice has been and is, in districts where the land is owned by middlemen, to approximate to a revenue of not more than half the net average profits, which is understood to be the suggestion made by the critics of our policy. It is, however, obvious that mathematical uniformity is impossible, as the conditions of uniformity are lacking ; and a share which might be just and equitable to one district might operate with extreme harshness in another. With regard to districts where the State takes its revenue direct from the cultivating peasant, it must again be remembered that the criticisms are advanced solely by and in the interests of the mortgagee and investor class. Occasionally the peasant owner of some particular field may be aggrieved at a rent imposed on that particular holding. But as a whole, the peasant is not merely satisfied with the low level of assessment, but is positively astonished at its moderation. This applies especially to districts in the near vicinity of Native States, where the contrast is more striking. Special enquiries by an expert and impartial tribunal have in recent years been made into the incidence of Land Kevenue on the peasant pro- prietor. In the Hissar district of the Punjab it amounted to only 3J per cent, of the average value of the produce, in the Central Provinces to about 4 per cent., in the Deccan to 7 per cent., LAND REVENUE 151 in Sholapur district of the Deccan to considerably less, and in the Panch Mahals to 5 per cent. In Gujarat alone does it attain 20 per cent., which is the figure which those critics have, in their total ignorance of the facts, pleaded for. Compare those figures with the rents paid by farmers at home, and it will not appear that the Indian farmer has much score for complaint. Before the subject is left, it is, however, necessary further to examine two or three of the contentions of the critics on this point. Mr. O'Donnell, for instance, on page 3 of his pamphlet, implies that the poverty and indebtedness of the cultivator is largely due to the fact that, in order to pay Land Eevenue, he is forced to borrow from extortionate moneylenders. One can only say that this statement is absolutely misleading, and, since the reforms of Lord Curzon, is wholly inaccurate. The truth is that the Kyot borrows from the moneylender to celebrate the weddings, funerals, etc., in his family in an extravagant fashion, and is in consequence frequently in diffi- culties about his rent ; but it is not the necessity of the payment of rent which causes him to go to the moneylender. Kent is easily paid from a good crop, and when crops fail liberal measures are taken to suspend, or remit, the Government demand, and they involve a similar suspension or omission of rent when payable to a landlord. It is, however, true that in the past, under 152 INDIA OF TO-DAY certain Local Governments and under exceptional circumstances the Land Eevenue was collected with a rigidity which was detrimental to the cultivator, and did at times force him into serious debt, and that the provisions for remitting and suspending Land Kevenue in cases of crop failure were not applied with necessary freedom. By the wise and sympathetic statesmanship of Lord Curzon, a reform of the greatest importance was achieved in rendering the collection of Land Revenue uniformly more elastic. Theoretically the Land Eevenue assessment is based on the average potentialities of the soil, and bad seasons are allowed for in its calculation. In a good season the profits should constitute a reserve fund from which the losses in a year of scarcity can be met. In fact, however, the expenditure on marriages, feasts and funerals ordained by custom, the temptations of credit and the thriftlessness natural to humanity and parti- cularly to the fatalistic Oriental, have rendered the theory inapplicable and pernicious. In a year of crop failure, if rent be exacted, the cultivator falls in debt to the moneylender, mortgages his hereditary property, and finds himself enthralled in the serfdom of the capitalist. It is, therefore, essential to introduce elasticity into the Revenue system by the extensive grant of liberal suspen- sions and remissions of rent without individual inquiry in seasons of drought. The free application LAND REVENUE 153 of this principle was effected by Lord Curzon's Government, against the strenuous opposition of at least one Local Government where the reins of power had for years been held by Secretariat officials, without practical knowledge of Indian district life, and with that theoretic adherence to the strict doctrines of the Manchester school, which has for generations unduly influenced the Indian Secretariat official. Under the new regime remissions and sus- pensions, proportioned in each case to the needs of the village, follow automatically upon any crop failure. A considerable question does, however, still remain to be adequately dealt with for the pro- tection of the cultivator. It is, however, unhappily a matter in regard to which protective measures are combatted with the utmost virulence by those very classes in India and their English partisans, who assume the championship of the cultivator to cloak their own interests in the Land Eevenue question. British rule had for the first time given the Indian peasant unrestrained rights of ownership in their land, and this gift, granted with every good intention by administrators trained in the economic theories of a previous generation, when the commercial middle- class ruled the destinies of England for their own exclusive benefit, and when the theories of Eicardo, Mill and Bentham were 154 INDIA OF TO-DAY regarded as a semi-divine revelation, has proved fatal in the extreme to India. Vested for the first time with a right to sell or mortgage his fields, the property on which two hundred million of his class solely depend, the cultivator yielded to the machinations of the moneylender and the temptations of an educated middle-class oligarchy. Fifty years of the application of Manchester theories resulted in the passing in many districts of one-third of the land from the peasant culti- vator to the commercial or lawyer middleman, in the mortgaging of another third without hope of redemption, and in the reduction of many from a race of stalwart and loyal yeomen to the position of discontented and ruined serfs. It cannot be too much or too often insisted upon that if there be important discontent in India, if there be real danger to our Indian Empire, it lies not in the greedy murmurings of a small educated class comprising one individual in every 200 of the population, but in the disaster which our Western theories have brought, or are bringing, to the two hundred million ^agriculturists the recruits of our native army comprised in that continent. For years a few of the wisest and most sympa- thetic of Indian Administrators men like Mr. Thorburn have been as voices crying in the wilderness. But the prevalence of Secretariat ideas in India and the fear of Liberal opinion in LAND REVENUE 155 England rendered reform unattainable till the coming of Lord Curzon. With the arrival of that statesman, the first needed steps were taken towards the required reform, and the Punjab Land Alienation Act and the Bombay Land Eevenue Code Amendment Act were added to the Statute Book. The latter it may be noted is, wittingly or unwittingly, very grossly misrepresented by Mr. O'Donnell in his book on Lord Curzon. He describes the tenure thereby introduced as com- pulsory while it is really optional, and describes the change as giving the collector power to exclude from succession, a charge for which there is absolutely not the slightest shadow of reason. Both were measures directed to the limitation of the agriculturists' rights of sale or mortgage. In the case of the former, compulsorily, in the latter, permissively, restrictions could be introduced by which no sale or mortgage should be enforced or be valid without the previous sanction of the District Officer. As in Bombay the Bill is, by an unfortunate weakness, merely permissive, the effects of the Act have not been so great or so universally beneficial as in the Punjab. But even in Bombay, there is at least one district the Panch Mahals where, by the voluntary agreement of the peasantry, nearly 80 per cent, of the land has been permanently safeguarded and preserved to its owners by this beneficent measure. In the 156 INDIA OF TO-DAY Punjab, the operation of the Act has been care- fully watched and ample and remarkable statistics are forthcoming. The Act was passed in 1900. It took some three years before its operation was in full working order. Since 1904 in each year the redemptions of mortgaged land have exceeded the area mortgaged and the redemptions go on increasing. In 1907 alone the area of land redeemed by agricultural tribes and mortgaged to them has exceeded the amount lost by sale and mortgage by such tribes by the figure of 290,000 acres. It might have been anticipated that a measure of this nature, which was represented by its edu- cated Liberal opponents as reactionary and fatal to credit, would have impaired and lowered the value of land. For three years, indeed, the com- mercial investing class strained every nerve to produce this effect. Before the Act the value of land was Es.46 per acre, and with its passing the value did temporarily fall to Es.37. But in the last few years the rise has been steady and constant, and in 1907 the figure actually attained Es.56 or Es.10 per acre more than the price before the passing of the Act. Of the popularity of the Act with the agricultural classes whose contentment and solvency are considerations of the first importance there cannot be the slightest doubt. It has led to a very marked decrease in the LAND REVENUE 157 ruinous litigation which was the bane of the Punjab peasant. Its effects are already so pronounced that everywhere the people are loud in their expressions of gratitude to Government for passing this Act, which they say has saved the land to themselves and to their children. The Blue Book ends by stating that " the one objection to the Act is that it prevents the commercial and professional classes from gratifying their ambition of becoming land- owners, and has thereby earned their disapproval, and in some cases their resentment." One of the reforms which every lover of India should therefore advocate is the extension of this principle to all districts of India where a peasant proprietary class exists. The Bombay Act should be made compulsory in selected districts, and similar Acts introduced in all analogous provinces. There is also, it may be admitted, a minor point in which the present Land Revenue system leaves room for improvement. As it affects a class indifferent or inimical to the " educated " critics of British policy, it has been passed over in silence by pamphleteers. I refer to the Rajput feudal fiefs to which allusion has already been made as exceptions to the general rule. These are estates originally obtained by cadets of a ruling house whether by the sword or by inheritance on a feudal service tenure. By a process analogous to that which took place in England, the conditions of service were in course 158 INDIA OF TO-DAY of time partly or wholly commuted for a money tribute of the same -nature as " scutage." When the Mahrattas over-ran the country, the Kajput gentry suffered with all other landowners and had to pay a tribute, where they were too weak to resist, as large as could be extorted by the marauding bands. Preserved by the advent of British rule, those Eajput gentlemen form an aristocracy unique in the country, loyal, gallant and chivalrous. They live on their estates, personally administer their properties, and are in every sense leaders of their people and rulers of their followers. They occupy in short a position analogous to the old county families or even more to the Scottish chief of a century ago. Their preservation is obviously an object of paramount importance and their influence one solely for good. Yet in the face of all the obvious evidence and of the reports of its own officers, the Bombay Government, under which a large number of those Eajput Talukdars falls, has affected to regard them as mere lease-holders or revenue farmers and has imposed upon them payments of Land Eevenue calculated upon such a basis but wholly inequit- able and inexpedient when imposed upon a native aristocracy and the natural leaders of the people. Even in the calculations of their assessment, mistakes of such a nature were committed that when, in 1902, under the stimulus of Lord Curzon, the Bombay Government was forced to inquire LAND REVENUE 159 into the circumstances, it was found that the majority of this class had been paying 75 per cent, of their income, while in one or two cases in Dhandluka Taluka of Ahmedabad district they had actually for years been paying more than their income. These errors of calculations have now been in large part rectified and the payments reduced to sums which would be reasonable if those Talukdars were simply lease-holders. But they are not lease-holders and their present inequitable position is aggravated by the fact that Talukdars of exactly similar status who, from the accident of geo- graphical distribution, are classed as belonging to political agencies, pay only comparatively small contributions for police and educational purposes. One of the reforms which is, therefore, necessary, and which must be wrought by the pressure of a party not obsessed by anti-aristocratic ideas, is the revision of the policy at present pursued towards those Talukdars and the calculation of their revenue payments on the basis merely of pro- portionate payment towards education, police, and communications. As, however, these estates are protected by special legislation from the clutches of the usurer and the attorney, and as a lessening of their burden would reduce the indebtedness of the landowner to the moneylender, it is to be feared that the reform will not commend itself to our so-called liberal and not disinterested critics. 1 60 INDIA OF TO-DAY At the present moment special legislation dealing with this class is again on the anvil, but it is to be regretted that the proposed Bill does not provide the needed concessions in regard to the tribute on Land Kevenue payable by the Talukdars. Even plague and famine have been pressed into the cause to substantiate the attack upon our Land Kevenue policy. Mr. O'Donnell, for instance, implies in his pamphlet that deaths from plague are more numerous where Land Kevenue is high and peasants in consequence impoverished. This statement is absolutely opposed to the facts. Any one acquainted with the real facts knows that the well-to-do Indians who live in well-built houses, are far more apt to fall victims to plague than the very poor who live in draughty huts of mats and bamboos. The Punjab peasants, whom he here quotes, are physically amongst the finest peasantry in India. It has also been contended that the intensity and frequency of recent famines are largely due to poverty caused by over-assessment. To quote from, a recent publication : "It does not seem necessary to discuss the economic fallacy that any alteration in the system or scale of assessments can permanently save an agricultural population from the effects of climatic disaster. The relation of cause and effect between a good rainfall, abundant crops, and agricultural pros- perity is not more obvious than is that between a LAND REVENUE 161 bad monsoon, deficient produce, and a suffering people." " It is not, of course, disputed that if the Government were largely to abate its demands, and if the amount of such abatement were fairly distributed amongst the cultivating classes and were saved up by them, instead of being thought- lessly spent, or absorbed by an increase of popu- lation or appropriated by a particular section, a reserve would be created that might enable those classes better to withstand the losses caused by failure of the rains. But, unfortunately, neither in the past nor in the present circumstances of the country can any warrant be found for the belief that the revenue so relinquished would constitute a famine relief fund in the hands of the people. Experience has shown that excessive leniency of the kind in question reacts prejudicially upon the industry of the agricultural classes, while it encourages the transfer of the soil to moneylenders and middlemen who swallow the profits intended for the cultivators and reduce the latter to a condition resembling serfdom. Fully to understand the exact truth of these observations, a visit to India is necessary. It is only then that one can fully realize the dis- advantage under which the peasant stands in relation to the middleman in point of education, energy, and enterprise ; and only then that one grasps the essential fact that the " educated " Brahmin and Bania class still firmly believes the M i62 INDIA OF TO-DAY peasant to have been created purely and simply to be a slave to his hierarchical superiors. The other contention that requires examination is that the permanent settlement of Bengal has preserved that province from famine and im- poverishment and that its extension to other regions of India would similarly benefit them. The Permanent Settlement of Bengal is the name given to the Act by which Lord Cornwallis, con- fusing the revenue farmers whom he found in Bengal with English landlords, confirmed them in the ownership of the villages whose revenues they happened temporarily to farm and fixed in per- petuity the annual revenue or tax which they should pay to the State in exchange for these gratuitous estates. At a moderate computation the State, owing to that settlement, loses annually six million pounds in revenue which the peasant proprietors in other parts of India have of course to make up. Now, in the words of Sir K. Strachey, " If this settlement had given prosperity and comfort to the millions who culbivate the soil, there might have been sufficient compensation for the sacrifice of the revenue directly derived from the land ; but this sacrifice, while it has failed to benefit the people of Bengal, causes permanent injustice to the whole of India and unduly increases the burdens of the entire people." As a matter of fact, if the whole of Bengal had been under cultivation LAND REVENUE 163 at the time of the permanent settlement, the gross rental at the rates then obtaining would have been four million eight hundred thousand pounds. In 1877, however, it amounted to thirteen million pounds. The difference went into the pockets of these artificially-created landlords to be squandered in many cases in Calcutta on every species of vice and folly. Bengal, like other provinces, has suffered from serious famine, whenever the monsoon failure, from which its geographical position ordinarily keeps it free, has spread to that part of India. The permanent condition of the people is one of destitution and misery, unknown in other parts of India. The rack-renting and oppression of the landlords was so great, the consequent impoverish- ment and wretchedness of the people so terrible that the Government of India was at last forced to intervene, and in the face of the opposition of that middle-class which now hypocritically professes to find assessments too heavy in order to obtain new fields for their selfish exploitation, passed a series of Tenancy Acts more stringent than elsewhere, which have to some extent mitigated the lot of the cultivator and alleviated the evils of absenteeism, lack of sympathy between landlord and tenant, and the multiplication of oppressive middlemen. In spite of the want of reason, the lack of truth, and the somewhat disingenuous air of altruism, the charges brought by these critics against the 164 INDIA OF TO-DAY Land Kevenue policy of Government might perhaps have been suspected to be, though erroneous and mistaken, yet honest and sincere. But their allusion to the permanent settlement of Bengal discloses the truth and destroys the pretence of sincerity. No further room for doubt is possible, and it is clear that these attacks are solely and entirely a move in the game of the small educated middle-class of India to possess them- selves of the lands of their braver and more faithful countrymen. The conclusions which must be drawn are, therefore, that both from peasant-proprietor and from landlord, the Land Kevenue taken by the British administration is in itself moderate, and leaves ample margin for profit and for stimulus to industry ; that relatively to the custom of former centuries and of the Native States it is extremely low, and that it tends to be further reduced ; and that in comparison to the rents taken by private native proprietors it is more than moderate. It is also clear that the pressure of land revenue has done nothing to add to the severity of famine or the difficulty of supporting a crop failure. On the contrary, it is certain that it is in districts where the incidence of land revenue is abnormally low that the stress of occasional famines is most felt, partly because of the inferiority of the soil and still more because of the resulting inrush of oppressive capitalist investors. CHAPTER VII TAXATION "DRAIN OF WEALTH" THEORY PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN BENGAL AND ITS EFFECTS- GENERAL PROSPERITY THE land revenue policy, which in the last chapter has been examined in perhaps wearisome detail, is not however the only point at which the system of Indian finance is assailed by Eadical critics. The whole system of taxation is constantly described as oppressive; India is pictured as reduced by a constant drain on her resources due to British exploitation and administrative charges ; and the condition of the people is said to be one of oppres- sion and adversity. I propose, therefore, to devote some pages to a scrutiny of the system of taxation in general and in particular of the " drain " theory of those critics. Thereafter, the general level of prosperity attained under British rule and the statistics of progress will only require statement to afford the best refutation of such attacks. What, then, are the real facts as to taxation ? Excluding Land Eevenue which, as has been shown, is in reality a rent and not a tax the average taxation per head in India is only Is. 165 i66 INDIA OF TO-DAY Even including Land Revenue it amounts only to 3s. 3f d. per head. It will, therefore, be seen that at any computation the average incidence of taxa- tion in India is extremely moderate. There are, moreover, other conditions which very greatly lessen the pressure even of this moderate taxation. The amount levied by means of an income tax comes only to l^d. per head, while the amount collected by direct taxation of all kinds comes only to 2d per head per year. The balance is collected by indirect taxation. It is collected by Excise, by Salt duties and Customs dues, by Stamp duties and by Eegistration fees. Of these the Salt tax is the most interesting to English students, as it is a Government monopoly unknown to England. Its incidence in India is 2Jd. per head compared to Sd. in France, lid. in Germany, 14d. in Austria, and 24d. in Italy. Even in comparison to income, its incidence can hardly be described as oppressive. According to Mr. Gokhale, one of the bitterest but one of the most able critics of our administrative system, the Salt tax represents in France half-a- day's income, one day's income in Germany, 1| days' income in Austria, 2 days' income in India, and 4 days' income in Italy. It may also be added that since Lord Curzon's arrival in India the Salt tax has twice been very materially reduced, and that further reductions may still be expected in the very near future. That our system of taxation is moderate and TAXATION 167 easy in collection is therefore apparent. That it is, however still imperfect must unhappily be admitted. But its imperfections are of a kind which our critics endeavour for obvious and not disinterested reasons to conceal and are diametrically opposite to those which they profess to discover. What these imperfections are, can best be disclosed by a quotation from a book on Indian finance by the Strachey brothers, two of the greatest authorities on the subject ever known, and men who it may incidentally be observed adhered to Liberal economic views and Free Trade principles. It cannot, therefore, be urged by critics that they are biassed in their remarks by political or economic preconceptions. They say : " It has always been admitted that the trading-classes in India are the least heavily taxed portion of the population. They have ordinarily contributed almost nothing to the expense of the State, while they derive perhaps the largest share of benefit from our adminis- tration and from the railways and from other works of improvement provided at the cost of the country at large. The exemption which these classes have enjoyed has long been felt to be one of the most indefensible and inequitable peculiarities of our Indian system of taxation. . . . Direct taxa- tion on the trading-classes has been imposed in India from time immemorial, and there is at this moment no important Native State in which it is 168 INDIA OF TO-DAY not a recognized part of the fiscal system. . . . Indignation in India is always aroused by every attempt to relieve the poorer classes from taxation at the expense of the richer. Those whom such a measure relieves are for the most part persons who accept the decrees of Governn^nt whether for better or for worse as providential dispensations which it is vain to question. On the other hand, it touches the pockets of persons who have both the will and the power to make their troubles known, and are by no means inclined to let their interests suffer for want of courageous advocacy. . . . The consequence is that every measure which imposes on the mercantile classes a larger share in the taxation of their country is denounced by the Indian Press with a vehement unanimity which an inexperienced observer would be tempted to value at more than its true worth. . . . The exemption of the richer classes from taxation is a political mistake, which as time goes on and know- ledge and intelligence increase, must become more and more mischievous." These remarks are as true now as when they were written, and an energetic financial reformer who will bravely grapple with the question will do India a service for which many unborn generations will bless him. At least two measures towards this end are at once to hand, one the abolition of the Municipal octroi dues by which the middle-classes pass the burden of municipal TAXATION 169 taxation to the shoulders of the poor, whether producer or consumer, and the substitution of a carefully graded house-tax ; the other, the levy of higher school fees for secondary education and the assessment of special educational rates from the trading and professional classes. But these steps would not exhaust the possibilities of fiscal reform, and a lesson in the better distribution of taxation might perhaps be learnt from the modes of assessing the trading-classes still practised in many Native States. At all events the question is one that calls for early investigation and remedial measures. Its need was already represented by Lord Salisbury in his minute of April 26, 1875. In it he wrote : " So far as it is possible to change the Indian fiscal system, it is desirable that the cultivator should pay a smaller proportion of the whole national charge. It is not in itself a thrifty policy to draw the mass of revenue from the rural districts where capital is scarce, sparing the towns where it is often redundant." I come now to the theory that Indian wealth is being " drained " into English pockets. It is one of which the erroneous nature should readily be patent. It is based on two facts only, viz. : that Indian exports exceed imports, and that the Indian Ex- chequer meets certain home charges. It is claimed that as exports exceed imports, and as the sum paid each year for home charges equals a considerable 1 70 INDIA OF TO-DAY percentage of the surplus of exports over im- ports, therefore India is being annually drained of its natural wealth to the extent of these figures by which its exports exceed its imports. It may be as well before proceeding further to state the figures for 1906 a typical year, and one in which no "boom" can be alleged. If exports and im- ports of treasure be excluded, exports exceeded imports by 31 million pounds in that year. Of the above, ten million pounds paid interest in England on debt chiefly incurred for railway and irrigation works. Ten-and-a-half million pounds returned to India in the shape of treasure, that being the net excess of imports of treasure over exports. Seven-and-a-half million pounds paid in England for administrative charges, such as the upkeep of the India Office and the pension of retired officers. The latest figures available, those for 1910-11, a somewhat exceptional year, are even more striking. In this year, again excluding treasure, merchan- dise of the value of 89 million pounds was imported, and merchandise of the value of 140 million pounds sterling exported. Over 20 million pounds worth of treasure was absorbed by India. Now if the contention of the critics be correct, then the interest paid by India for the borrowed capital with which her railways and irrigation works were built represents an annual drain on the resources of the country. As indigenous capital TAXATION 171 was not forthcoming, it would therefore, as the logical conclusion, have been better for India had these works never been undertaken. Strange though it may seem, this insane conclusion which needs only to be stated in order to be refuted, has actually been maintained by the extremist native Press. How mistaken all other countries must be, which look on it as a matter for congratulation when they attract foreign capital for investment ! That seven-and-a-half million pounds per year are spent on administrative charges outside of India is no doubt less advantageous to India than it would be, if without disbursing this amount it could be as well administered and have achieved the same results as it has now arrived at. But it is obvious that these payments are the price that India pays for its security and its prosperity and when the price be compared even with the annual increment in trade achieved under the aegis of Great Britain, it will readily be allowed that no nation has ever paid so little for so vast a progress and so im- measurable an improvement. That those charges should be retrenched wherever possible, and scruti- nized with the last degree of exactness, all schools of thought concur. It is noteworthy that Lord Curzon himself championed the cause of retrench- ment in this matter, and at least on one occasion successfully protected the Indian Exchequer from a demand of the English Treasury. As for the general question of excess of exports over imports, i;2 INDIA OF TO-DAY that again is a disease from which other nations would gladly suffer. In England, where we are ailing from a real loss owing to the excess of im- ports over exports, we are unlikely to have much sympathy with this imaginary grievance. Busi- ness men in England would rejoice if each year our exports exceeded our imports by twenty to fifty million pounds, and if we could in addition count on a solid ten to twenty million pounds of treasure being absorbed into the country. The general figures on which alone any inference as to prosperity is possible now call for examination. In dealing with the figures of urban population, allusion has already been made to the vast indus- trial growth which has been a feature of British rule over India and in particular of the adminis- tration of recent years. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, India did not produce a million pounds a year of staples for exportation. By 1834 the total figure of trade had slowly risen to about 10,000,000. In 1878 the total of imports and exports exceeded 104 millions. In 1896 the total foreign trade was 138 million pounds. But the most wonderful and most encouraging growth has been reserved for the ten years which suc- ceeded, for the ten years of Conservative rule at home in which fell the wise and statesmanlike administration of Lord Curzon in India. By a steady and continuous but splendid growth, the volume of trade increased till, in 1906, it reached GENERAL PROSPERITY 173 the magnificent total of 225 million pounds. In 1911 the total volume attained 260 millions. These figures point, on the one hand, to an extension of agriculture largely due to the wonderful progress of irrigation, on the other to the still more encouraging growth of manufactures and industry. It seems impossible for any ingenuity, however malevolent, to construe these figures as anything but a wonderful and unprecedented testimony to continued prosperity and good government. If such an expansion of trade, such a marvellous increase in material wealth and resource, in the provision of labour and the organization of indus- try, are symptoms, not of national prosperity, but of national disease, then all one can say is that this is a disease of which other nations would gladly know the virus, with which every land would rejoice to be infected. And we can reflect with pride that not only the state of peace and justice which is a condition of trade, not merely organized administration and improved facilities which have rendered this extension of commerce possible, not merely the habits of industry and self-reliance which are requisite for commercial progress, are due to British rule, but also that individual staples and particular industries have been wholly introduced into India by British enterprise. Jute, for instance, was practically unknown till 1851, while there are now annually three million acres under jute. Tea, again, was 174 INDIA OF TO-DAY first introduced by the brothers Bruce in 1826, and extended by Lord William Bentinck in 1834. At the present moment more than 500,000 acres are under tea, and the value of the annual exports of tea exceed eight millions. Quinine is another re- cent product of annually growing value. The mill industry owes its genesis entirely to British enter- prise acting upon the Indian mind. There are now in all 250 cotton mills, employing daily 230,876 persons. There are also besides leather factories, etc., 58 jute mills which daily employ 216,390 persons. The total of cotton yarn produced per year has attained the figure of 680,000 pounds, and the total of woven goods the figure of 245,800 pounds. Incidentally another misrepresentation may be noticed here, as it deals with the mill industry. In their anxiety to besmirch the reputation of Lord Curzon, some assailants have ascribed to his so-called " reactionary policy," the ruin of the mill industry in Bombay, and implied that this industry languished and declined under Lord Curzon's rule. The facts are, however, directly contrary, and it is difficult to believe that this misrepresentation could by any possibility have been sincerely and honestly made. The facts are simply these, that by steady and progressive increase, the outturn of yarn from the Bombay mills had risen from 302,295 pounds in 1896 to 491,610 pounds in 1906. What justification GENERAL PROSPERITY 175 there is in fact for the misrepresentation is that while in 1899-1900 the output was 371,041 pounds of yarn, in 1900-1901 the output dropped to 243,626 pounds. But assailants who were no amateurs, in the subject, no casual visitors to India, and who had spent their lives in the country, knew where to look for the statistics which would have shown that in 1901-1902 the output again jumped to a higher total than ever, viz : 415,028, and that it afterwards rose further. They must also have known that in 1899-1900 India was the victim of an almost unprecedented famine, and that the cotton crop failed nearly entirely through the major part of the continent. They knew that the years which succeeded, in which the mill industry again made such a bound upwards and surpassed all its previous records, were also years of crop scarcity in the Bombay presidency. And they knew that the outturn of woven goods had never decreased. It is, therefore, difficult to understand why they suppressed the simple truth that in one year out of ten an unprecedented famine reduced the mill output of yarn, because it reduced the cotton crop ; that in consequence some wild-cat enterprises failed; that as soon as the crops im- proved again, the mill industry augmented in a much more rapid ratio and reached a height previously unknown. Instead of the decline in one year and the ruin of a few speculative 176 INDIA OF TO-DAY companies being a reflection on Lord Curzon's ad- ministration, the slightness of the decline and the speedy recuperative force shown in spite of a famine which, under previous Governments, would have brought havoc and disaster to the whole land, is the greatest testimony to the value of British rule, and in particular to the statesmanship which guided India's destinies through those calamitous days. Another feature of recent years, which surely it is difficult to treat as anything except evidence of material prosperity and confidence in our ad- ministration, is the enormous increase in the banked wealth of the country. Leaving aside the fact that India in one year absorbs 20 millions of treasure hardly the symptom of impoverish- ment the money deposited in banks in India and available for the commercial and industrial operations has risen from about 23,000,000 in 1901 to about 55,000,000 in 1910. Not the least encouraging item of increase is that the money in- vested in the Post Office Savings Bank the bank of the poor man has also risen since 1896 from over six to over eleven million pounds. At the same time about 1J million pounds were deposited in the operative credit societies, a new movement which has again increased enormously since that date. The wonders of Indian irrigation are so well known, that space need not be devoted to their RAILWAY EXTENSION 177 description. The provinces of the Punjab and Sind in particular will bear lasting testimony to the efforts of the British Government in this direction, and to the devotion of its officers. It is, however, proper to notice that Lord Curzon's period of administration was remarkable, not only for a very considerable extension of irrigation, but also for surveying, demarcating and defining the limits within which the extension of irrigation in the future is possible. The vast extension of the railway system is perhaps even more important than the in- crease of irrigation as a means of combating the ravages of famine, and bears even more obvious testimony to the growth of material prosperity in India, The first small railway line in India was opened from Bombay to the neigh- bouring town of Thana in 1853. In 1878 the total mileage open to traffic was 8215 miles; in 1881 trains ran over 9895 miles of railroad. In 1910 there were 31,490 miles of railroad open to traffic, and a further 2898 miles sanctioned for construc- tion. In 1909-10 329,000,000 passengers were conveyed on this enormous railway system and nearly 61 million tons of goods were transported. It is difficult to conceive the stimulus thereby given to trade, the vast insurance thereby effected against famine, and the number of persons thereby employed. The debt which the country owes to the security of our rule, and to the enterprise N 178 INDIA OF TO-DAY of the British Government can be adequately measured only by one who compares these figures with the development of other Oriental countries, with the foreign-owned and decrepit ten-mile-per- hour railroad system of Persia, for instance, or with the devastation wrought by famine in China through the lack of adequate railway communica- tion. That these railways are all nationalized or quasi-nationalized is evidence of the ability of Government itself to deal with progressive measures. Incidentally the progress of the country may also be gauged by the fact that there now exist in India 2750 printing presses in which appear about 700 newspapers and 1900 other periodicals. The elaborate system by which roads are built and maintained either by Imperial, by pro- vincial, or by local funds provides also an im- portant contribution at once to the comfort and wealth of the people. A hundred years ago there was perhaps hardly a district in India which had even one tolerable road. To this day this is a part of their duties, which, with some brilliant exceptions, Native States are only too prone to neglect, except in the immediate vicinity of their capitals. But there is now not one British district which is not intersected by a network of tolerable, and in many cases, of excellent roads. The consequent facility of communication, apart from its inevitable result in establishing security from GENERAL PROSPERITY 179 robbery and attack, is surely a distinct contribu- tion to the wealth of the community, by the saving of time and expense in the carriage of goods and the accessibility of markets. In general it may be said with assurance that, while other classes have obviously and patently gained in wealth and prosperity, so also the rural population has, though less rapidly, raised its standard of comfort and attained to a degree of wealth and security previously unknown. Transi- tion periods no doubt always bring temporary inconveniences along with increased general prosperity ; but, as the Irish or the Scottish peasant is now more prosperous than when, in the eighteenth century, he picked a precarious living amidst danger and rapine from the bog or the moor, so assuredly is the Indian peasant now more comfortable and more prosperous than he has ever been before in the whole period of history. If, then, regard be had to the obvious signs of continuous and unparalleled progress, of improved communications, of augmented commerce, of flourishing industries, of the extension of culti- vation and the discovery of new staples; if, moreover, a comparison be made either with the state of self-governing Oriental countries like Persia and China or to that of Asiatic Eussia ; if, then, the recollection travels to the condition of India a century ago to the horrors caused by the Mahratta raids and the outrages of marauding i8o INDIA OF TO-DAY bands of Pindaris and discharged soldiers ; if attention be turned to the history of previous Governments and the terrors of earlier famines, and the omnipresent fear of oppression, cruelty, and tyranny, it would appear to be left only to insanity to doubt the sure basis of material prosperity, of security, and of justice on which the British rule in India rests. Be it remembered, that to this day there are old men in India who recollect the time when they tilled with the matchlock over their shoulders, and when they reaped under arms ; who lived in daily terror of the robber and the worst oppression of the tax- collector; who had to submit without redress to blows and mutilation at the hands of their rulers ; and to whom a crop failure meant death in the worst horrors of starvation. What must the contrast be to them when they see on all hands a security and a peace more complete than that of most countries in Europe ; a railway which brings the merchant to their door and secures them a market for their crops ; and an adminis- trative organization infinitely more scientific and more perfect than that of England, and surpassing in humanity and practical common sense that of France ? CHAPTER VIII EDUCATION POLICY IN every country perhaps the most important, because ultimately the most penetrating, branch of administration is the department of education. In India the educational question gains special importance both because it lies very near the weeds of disaffection and disloyalty, and partly because in this question our achievement has so far fallen behind our intention. The matter of education cannot therefore be passed over in silence. It requires an investigation at once thorough and impartial. The question has a particular interest at this moment, as one school of thought prevalent especially amongst officers in India is inclined to denounce education as the root of all dis- contents, while the other school represents the educational system prevailing until 1901-2 as perfect in intention, if not in completeness, and decries the reforms introduced by Lord Curzon after that year as reactionary. When the educational system in India is spoken of, reference is made to the education 181 182 INDIA OF TO-DAY introduced by the English administration having for its ideal the acclimatization of Western ideas, Western science and modern knowledge through the medium of the English language. It is unnecessary now to refer to the old quarrels of " Anglicists " and " Orientalists." The Eubicon was crossed by 1840 and Indian education has been unalterably fixed on the lines of English and modern learning. It is permissible, however, to regret that Oriental scholarship and philosophy has been so utterly neglected in the new teaching, and to remark that its value would be redoubled for Indians if illumined by the light of Western knowledge. It must also be regretfully said that one great difference between the old indigenous learning of India and our modern system of education is that the former did achieve its aim and the latter does not. The ideal of the one was medieval, of the latter is modern, but the former was successful in attaining its narrower object. Now to say, as some have in their rashness exclaimed, that education provokes discontent and is in itself dangerous, is to despair of the human mind and of knowledge. This is not a doctrine that can be endorsed by any who realize the vast benefit of enlightenment and knowledge, and who have sufficient historical reading to under- stand the evils of prejudice and ignorance. It remains as true now as when Lord Lawrence said it, that there are "few dangers to the stability of EDUCATION POLICY 183 Government so serious as the ignorance of the people." But the proposition may be reversed, and it can with truth be said that when discontent is produced by education, then the education given is unsuitable, or the knowledge imparted is itself evil and imperfect. It is not in India alone, but in England also that recent developments must lead, not to that fatal despair of all know- ledge, but to the revision of educational ideals and methods. Education was first seriously taken up as a department of the administration in the year 1854 on the receipt of the famous despatch from the Court of Directors. From that year to 1871 its distinctive note was the extension of higher secondary schools with the University Entrance Examination as their objective. The three examining Universities of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were founded in the year 1857. The theory of the " downward filtration " of education prevailed in that period. After 1871 attention began to be paid to primary education, but higher education still largely held the field and the University of Lahore was established in 1882 and that of Allahabad in 1887. Now one leading characteristic of our Indian educational system is that the vast majority of students go to secondary schools and to college merely with a view of passing certain tests prescribed for Government service, which is still 1 84 INDIA OF TO-DAY looked upon as the most assured and respectable of professions. There can be little doubt that the cause of higher education itself has been to some extent injuriously affected by basing selection for Government service on school and university attainments. Again, as this is the end in view, it is obviously the desire of both parents and scholars to acquire the knowledge necessary for passing these tests as quickly and cheaply as possible, and not to spend time on any extraneous learning. Primary education, when it is sought, is sought either by the small trader for the acquisition of the necessary minimum of reading, writing and arithmetic, or by the agriculturist to enable him to cope with the machinations of the money, lender. With very few exceptions indeed it may be said that nowhere in India is the education introduced by the British administration sought for the sake of thought and learning itself. One result and a further stimulant of these characteristics has been the growth of examina- tions to extravagant dimensions. Instruction has been confined within a rigid framework of pre- scribed courses suitable for written tests. The tendency was further increased by the resultant custom of assessing the grants given to aided schools by the results of examination. The examinations themselves were vitiated by the fact that the pupil at each examination had to take up so many branches of knowledge which at the next EDUCATION POLICY 185 he had to give up, thus acquiring at the most a mere superficial smattering and a dangerous conceit. The number of subjects was so great as to make it impossible to cultivate either contem- plation or observation. The whole examination system failed to have an educative value because the minimum of subjects required was ridiculously high and the minimum of marks ridiculously low. The universities, by a fatal destiny, emphasized and stimulated the evils of the system by choosing as their model, at the very moment when that model itself was to undergo modification because of its obvious faults, the more than doubtful policy of the University of London. They adopted the worst faults of that model as it was in 1854 with none of the virtues, which even at that period could be dimly discerned under its unprepossessing exterior. The Indian Universities, therefore, remained merely examining bodies with an erroneous and injurious system of examination, drawing their candidates from various uninspected affiliated colleges. Under a system where college vied with college in acquiring pupils, and in some cases used all the arts of advertisement and underselling to attract them, it was fated that very soon the number of candidates who failed to pass and of graduates who, without acquiring any real mental training, had found their cherished degree insufficient to gain them employment, should increase to dangerous i86 INDIA OF TO-DAY proportions. In 1884-85, 430,000 scholars were receiving an advanced education and three-fourths of that number were studying English. In the same year, only 9280 students were acquiring anything except a purely literary education. In a report written at the time by the present Lord Macdonnell we read : " If it be remembered that the vast mass of those students belongs to the lower middle-classes whose sole asset is their education ; that the landed proprietors are not largely represented in our schools and colleges ; that trade and commerce contribute no more than a tithe to the number of pupils ; the full significance of the above figures will be appreciated." Again, in 1886 we find one of the leading native newspapers The Mahratta com- plaining of the large number of discontented graduates unable to find employment. Incredible as it may seem, in spite of these warnings, in spite of the obvious and manifest evils of the system which anyone with eyes could see, it was not till the energy and keen educational interest of Lord Curzon awoke new life in the administration that anything was done to amend or improve the system. At the eve of the great changes introduced by Lord Curzon, in the year 1901-2, the end of one of the quinquennial periods periodically reviewed by the Government of India, the following were the statistics of educational progress. EDUCATION POLICY 187 There were five examining universities, to which were affiliated 191 colleges with 23,000 students. There were 5493 secondary schools with 558,000 pupils : including students of law and medicine, there were at the same date only 15,000 students and scholars throughout India engaged in any study except the normal literary course. Of these 15,000, 5000 were students of industrial schools. But a review of these industrial schools showed that the system was wanting in definiteness both of methods and objects, and that its effect upon technical training and industrial development was practically non- existent. Of the industrial schools, the patent defects were the absence of a sustained policy; the large proportion of pupils who had no inten- tion of pursuing an industrial career ; the confusion between general and technical studies ; the want of co-ordination with local industries; and the poor quality of the instruction. A large proportion of the pupils attending industrial schools had no intention of practising the trades they learned, but passed into clerical and other employments. They used the industrial schools merely to obtain the general education which they could have acquired in ordinary schools at less cost to the State but at greater cost to themselves. There were, it may also be noted, only 219 students of agriculture and only 822 students of veterinary science, in a land which lives i88 INDIA OF TO-DAY practically entirely on agriculture and on cattle- breeding. At the same date there were 98,538 primary schools established, recognized or registered by the State with 3,268,726 pupils. In Bombay and Bengal about 23 boys out of a hundred of school- going age were undergoing instruction. In Burmah the figures per hundred had declined from over 20 to under 17. In the case of that province the apparent decline is, however, accounted for by the wholesale exclusion from the register of private indigenous schools which failed to reach the required standard. In the United Provinces and the Punjab only 8 out of a hundred boys were receiving instruction. Everywhere between 1891 and 1901 the rate of progress of primary education had been steadily growing worse. But between 1881 and 1901 secondary education had more than doubled its numbers. In Bengal, Madras, Bombay and Berar about li per cent, of the boys were undergoing secondary instruction and in the Punjab rather more than 1 per cent. In the same period the schools where primary education was given had increased only by 20 per cent, and the pupils by 50 per cent. At the same date the money spent in India from all sources on education, including fees and endowments, was only ,2,200,000. Of this sum only 700,000 was spent by Government, and under 500,000 by Local Boards and Municipalities. EDUCATION POLICY 189 On primary education from all public sources only 400,000 was being spent, and, including all resources in Native States, as well as British India, only 750,000 was expended on primary instruction. It must be remembered that at the same time the gross revenue of India was 73,000,000 and the net income after deducting the expenditure on commercial departments and assignments, compensation, refunds and draw- backs, &c., 52,000,000. It can hardly be contended and on this point and here alone can the views of the advanced school of critics be concurred in that with such an income the dole of 700,000 for education was in any way adequate or satisfactory. We find, therefore, in 1901-2 when Lord Curzon began the movement of educational reform, which has aroused so much criticism : (1) wholly inadequate expenditure ; (2) a limited and primary education ; (3) a secondary education supplied in exchange for very cheap fees but fed by the State to an extent out of proportion to the expenditure on primary education, wholly literary and very inadequate, and almost wholly monopolized by the lower middle-class; (4) a university system of the most inferior type ; (5) a hampering and mischievous examination system; (6) neglect of technical education both by teachers and pupils ; (7) want of scholastic discipline ; (8) a large and growing class of hopeless and desperate school and 190 INDIA OF TO-DAY university failures and an increasing number of graduates without -employment or possibility of employment. It must further be remembered that these results were inherent in the system, had been remarked fifteen years earlier byEnglish and Native observers, but had been allowed to go on and accumulate without reform or amendment. Now this is the system which a certain school extol and wished to extend. They did indeed find fault with the insufficiency of expenditure, but they wished to increase the expenditure not by improving the quality and reforming the system, but by increasing the quantity of the second-rate output. And in education the second-rate is always deleterious. There was, however, at the same time if the Missionary Schools (amongst which St. Xavier's College in Bombay deserves especially honorable mention) be excluded at least one indigenous scholastic institution in India which almost merits comparison with an Oxford College, and which admirably achieved the ends in view. That Institute is the Mussulman College at Aligarh, an institution comprising both a school and a college affiliated to the University of Allahabad. Founded in the face of difficulties and opposition in 1875 by Sir Sayad Ahmed Khan, it rose on the rising flood of popularity in 1886 and was affiliated to the University in 1888. Its aim is not so much EDUCATION POLICY 191 to produce distinguished scholars as to train men fit to enter the learned professions and Govern- ment Service. It is noteworthy by a practice in India exceptional that students are taught theology according to their sect in Persian or Arabic. The system of discipline enforced is strict and is largely in the hands of monitors chosen from and by the boys. There are 270 pupils in the college and 350 in the school, of whom some 500 are boarders. They are very largely drawn from the ranks of the landed gentry and the upper classes. The constant association with European professors, the attention paid to normal and physical training, the healthy tone and esprit de corps of the college have set on the boys a cachet earning universal respect and confidence. In all the dreary waste of lost educational effort, one bright spot appears at Aligarh and another at the Mayo College, Ajmer. If every province could have two such colleges one for Hindus and one for Mussulmans the prospects of education would be bright and the future of India could be regarded with equanimity. Keforms introduced in an educational system are necessarily so detailed and so technical that a description of the vast change of system inaugurated by Lord Curzon cannot in these limits be undertaken. He has sought to co- ordinate increased expenditure with an improved quality of instruction ; to multiply and ameliorate 192 INDIA OF TO-DAY primary education ; to make secondary teaching really educative, and to restrict it to those classes, who, whether by intellect or by social position, can benefit from it ; to enlarge the scope and augment the practical value of technical educa- tion ; to distribute expenditure equitably ; and to insist on discipline and good moral training. Every step has been opposed by those who found their interests, as demagogues, in the continuance of the recent system, and its out-turn of ill- taught, undisciplined, and discontented literary " intellectuals " from the lower middle-classes. It may be noted that Mr. O'Donnell speaks of this class of "intellectuals" really comparable for potential evil only to the worst output of French, Italian, and Russian universities as " the most cultured body of non-European origin in the world, and the highest product of our wisdom." From a man whose mental vision is so perverted it is obvious that no justice can be expected. It is therefore the highest commenda- tion to Aligarh College that he speaks of the students and directors of that magnificent institu- tion as " a small clique, mostly of non-Indian descent, with its headquarters at Aligarh College, which of recent years has become actively hostile to Hindu progress." But the clouds of opposition gathered darkest round Lord Curzon's Universities' Bill. The Bill which was introduced on the report of a very EDUCATION POLICY 193 strong Commission, and after unusual thought and reflection sought, in the first place, to mako a degree represent more work and study, and to attain to a higher intellectual and moral standard than before. To quote the words of a Govern- ment Kesolution, inspired by Lord Curzon's lofty genius, his aim was " to make people realize that education in the true sense means something more than the acquisition of so much positive knowledge, something higher than the mere passing of examinations, that it aims at the progressive and orderly development of all the faculties of the mind, that it should form character and teach right conduct that it is, in fact, a preparation for the business of life." Secondarily, the Bill sought also to lessen the number of unsuccessful candidates, and of persons who proceeded as far as the matriculation or intermediate examinations without intending to study further. These ends it sought to attain by (a) lessening the number of the Senate and composing it largely of teachers and only of persons of academic distinction ; (b) vesting executive power in a small strong syndicate ; (c) inspecting affiliated colleges frequently ; (d) granting greater powers of dis- affiliating useless colleges and insisting on more thorough scrutiny before affiliation. An attempt is also made to introduce the principle of residence by means of hostels. It is also understood that o i 9 4 INDIA OF TO-DAY fees are to be somewhat raised on the principle that : " Firstly, they must not be pitched so high as to check the spread of education ; and, secondly, they must not be fixed so low as to tempt a poor student of but ordinary ability to follow a university course, which is not his real interest to undertake. " The Bill was supported by leading native educationalists and true patriots like Dr. Bhand- arkar and the Nawab Sayad Hossein Bilgrami. The large educated Presidency of Madras was largely in favour of reform. It was, however, bitterly opposed by the Poona Brahmins, and still more by the educated middle-class of Bengal. It was opposed partly by those who look entirely at the commercial side of education ; partly by Eadicals who object to State control, because they fear that the political agitation which they foster in the universities will be hampered and checked by the maturer minds, clearer thought and better social rank of future graduates. They have called the legislation " undemocratic " a curious taunt from a class which is indifferent to the quality and practical utility of primary education, which ridicules the labours undertaken by Government on behalf of the teaching of the aboriginal and backward castes, and which aims merely at an ex- tension in the lower middle-class of a smattering of English knowledge, which shall make the student unfit for his ancestral occupations, discontented, EDUCATION POLICY 195 and a ready victim for inoculation with political poison. The period between 1902 and 1907 a period covered by the quinquennial report on education and the latest for which figures are available has been a period chiefly of discussion and transition. The new system inaugurated by Lord Curzon was still at its commencement, and had barely had time to operate and effect great change. Even so, however, the improvement has been noteworthy and the change wholly for good. Since 1907 a Liberal Government has led to some abatement in that zeal for education inaugurated by Lord Curzon, and improvement, though continuous, has been less settled and consistent than it might otherwise have been. Expenditure has increased as a whole from 2,200,000 to 5,200,000 in 1911-12. Excluding expenditure on scholarships and the like, 1,300,000 of this money is now devoted to primary, and a similar sum to secondary education. The grants of Government now amount to 1,800,000 and the subventions from local funds and municipalities to 850,000. And this ex- penditure has already borne good fruit with the promise of a richer harvest in the near future. For other figures the statistics of 1907 are the latest available. While the Arts and Law Colleges were reduced to 164, according to the University Lists, with a slightly increased number 196 INDIA OF TO-DAY of students, the total of students studying subjects other than Arts had increased to 18,000. The secondary schools showed a normal increase. Primary schools, the weakest part of the system, had, however, made a magnificent leap forward with an advance of about 10,000 new schools and 700,000 more pupils. The advance in teaching the backward and aboriginal classes was especially noteworthy. Stricter conditions were laid down and were enforced for the secondary schools. Increased provision was made for the training of teachers and the examination system was sim- plified. Steps were also taken to raise the standard of technical instruction. This was a result of which the amenders of the system might well be proud : but it rested with Lord Curzon's successors and the Secretary of State to carry out the policy. It is to be feared that the greatly delayed quinquennial report to 1912 may show results less satisfactory after Lord Curzon's departure. These are the educational reforms inaugurated by Lord Curzon, and their steady and consistent extension and amplification is the demand of everyone who has at heart the interests of India and the reputation and honour of England. A large and practical extension of literary and of sound but simple primary education, thorough training in clear thought and modern knowledge, in moral progress and good discipline of the upper EDUCATION POLICY 197 classes, and the really talented of the middle and lower-classes, the wide expansion of useful technical training in the middle-classes, and, co- ordinate with the improvement of the system, a greatly increased educational expenditure, these are the reforms which India has a right to demand of its British Administrators. As their effect is gradually felt, so will decline the numbers and influence of that discontented crowd of un- employed " intellectuals " without discipline and without paternal reverence who now fill the platforms, the Press and the police courts. CHAPTER IX SOCIAL AND OTHER GBIEVANCES I COME now to the most thorny and difficult, but perhaps the most important, side of my subject the question of discontent, of social or political grievances, of the reforms possible and necessary, and of those measures of reform or alteration inaugurated by Lord Morley. The leading conditions under which this dis- content or sense of grievance has become apparent and in accordance with which all reforms or changes must be introduced, I have endeavoured in the foregoing chapters plainly and without rhetoric to set forth. The picture which they should have called forth is that of a vast con- tinent, inhabited by many peoples, divided amongst themselves by birth, origin, colour, caste, language and religion ; of a population in enormous prepon- derance dependent upon agriculture, wholly or in great part uneducated and illiterate ; but with other castes varying from the most primitive and barbarous of aboriginal forest tribes to the culti- vated, refined, and highly developed Brahmin or Eajput ; a land of extremes, where philosophy, 198 SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 199 the most abstract and the most spiritual, sits side by side with the rudest worship of the Phallus or of tree spirits and animistic totems ; where the latest developments of loom or spinning mule are found side by side with the stone hand-kern and the scattering of seed on unploughed land ; where the student of Spencer and of Darwin himself cowers before the prophecies of astrologers and the fear of ghosts and evil horoscopes. Of all the vast population of three hundred millions, only a very small fraction lives in towns of over 50,000 population ; of all the male inhabi- tants, less than one in two hundred know even a smattering of English. To this congeries of opposites and contradictions, Great Britain has brought peace and tranquility, has given justice and impartial administration, has bestowed com- merce and industry and material prosperity. It is with the voices which are audible from the upper layers of this mass that we have now to deal, and with the actions that we can undertake to assuage grievances without betraying the interests of the dumb majority. Well, first and most obvious, there is of course the political grievance, founded on racial distinc- tions. There are of course extremists who make no secret of the fact that they wish to turn us out of the country altogether. I have a certain sym- pathy with their point of view; we should not like to be ruled by an alien race, however good 200 INDIA OF TO-DAY the Government might be ; but firmly believing, as I do, that the' withdrawal of the English Government would plunge India once more into adversity and bloodshed of the most terrible kind, I feel convinced that we should maintain our supremacy with all the forces at our command. The social grievance is intangible and there- fore more difficult to deal with. We are told that Indians who have been to England, and have been treated there as equals find on returning to India, that they are not accepteddn English houses on terms of equality ; but then we must remember that Indians seclude their wives and do not ask English- men to share in their home life. The fact is, that no laws can ever entirely bridge racial differences of thought, habit and temperament, and alteration in the constitution of the Executive or Legislative Councils can never touch the social question. There is only one way. Let the English show sympathetic appreciation, as they do now, of every endeavour on the part of Indians to improve their country, and let the Indians, superior to petty pride, prove by constant and sustained effort that they are doing their utmost to promote and to combine with the English in promoting the best interests of their country and their fellow-countrymen, and it is only a question of time before all, English and Indians alike, will be drawn closer together by the noble aims for which they are mutually striving. This grievance is, however, a matter which SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 201 affects only the richer and more educated classes in the towns an influential and powerful class no doubt, but numerically a small one. But a con- dition, very gravely predisposing to discontent and very powerfully preparing the soil for its spread, is that which has already been dwelt upon at consider- able length the neglect of the value of personal influence in India and the continued diminution of the authority and weight of the District Officer. It is perhaps no mere coincidence that discontent has been most loud and most real in the province which has most completely thrown away the system of District control and personal influence. It can- not be too often or too strongly insisted upon that the most urgent and most essential of all reforms is the administrative rehabilitation of the Head of the District, his investment with the fullest pos- sible authority, and his responsibility for personal contact with the people of his District. There is also unhappily no question that mis- takes grave and repeated mistakes in the educa- tional system introduced by us have called into being a class of men at all times and in every country inclined to disaffection and discontent. The dangers arising from that student class the risen men who despise their own class and are despised by all others who have just enough smattering of philosophy not to read Plato or Spinoza or Hegel, but to be carried away by the arid sensationalism of Mill and the inconsistent 202 INDIA OF TO-DAY logomachies of Spencer these dangers have always been recognized by every nation so unfor- tunate as to be burdened with a similar class. In India the danger has been intensified be- cause the Indian lad at college imitates English manners without being in a contact close enough to enter into their spirit, while he contemns his native manners and loses his respect for ancestral demeanour and decorum. We have in the last chapter seen what steps, at Lord Curzon's initiative, are being taken to repair these mistakes and to constitute an educa- tional system of a nobler and graver kind. Educa- tional reforms require time to produce their effect, and a generation may elapse before these recent changes have brought a beneficial reaction into full play; but it may be hoped that a gradually increasing alleviation of past evils may soon become noticeable. There remains yet a residuum of unrest due partly to causes beyond the control of human governments, partly to indirect consequences of the mistakes of policy already pointed out. The situation is summed up in a rhetorical manner in the following quotation from a speech by the Hon. Mr. Chitnavis, a member of the Viceroy's Council, chosen from the Central Provinces. Speaking of the influence of want, he says : " No class of the people is free from this influence of the all -pervad- ing evil, which is, to a large extent at least, the SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 203 effect of a civilization unsuited to the habits, tem- perament, and peculiar circumstances of the coun- try. With the gradual working of the disruptive laws of succession and the break up of the joint family system, most of the ancient families are ruined, notwithstanding the paternal care of the Court of Wards ; with the limitations upon their authority, the land-holding classes have lost their capacity, prestige and power; increased com- petition for career has reduced the prospects of the respectable classes who have for centuries sup- ported themselves by service, while the progress of an attractive material civilization has instilled into them high ideas of ease and enjoyment and placed them beyond their reach by their costliness ; and the lower classes, although in receipt of higher wages, at places have lost their pristine simplicity of rural life and been drawn into reckless and ruinous expenditure. " The high prices, for which free international trade is to some extent responsible, have affected the whole nation ; it is the same cry everywhere ; it is want and struggle for existence. The admin- istration, besides being costly, is too complex, exotic and unimaginative. There is a bewilder- ing growth of institutions, departments and red- tapeism enough to give a rude shock to the easy Oriental nature. Changes are sudden and appear in quick succession. All the conventional ideas of the people have been displaced, even the 204 INDIA OF TO-DAY framework of society has been 'rudely shaken. The natural leaders have lost their prestige and with it their influence. " He is corroborated with regard to the displace- ment of social ideas and the perils of the ruin of the indigenous aristocracy by the Tikka Sahib of Nabha, who now as Rajah is perhaps the most important of Sikh Princes. In thanking Lord Curzon for those reforms in which he at last allowed recognition of the fact that the Indian aristocrats are the true and natural leaders of the people, he exclaims : " Examination qualifica- tions cannot be regarded as the only test of fitness for authority. It is also nobility of character and birth and a sympathetic attitude towards the people, which make a popular and beneficent ruler. Facilities should be afforded to young noblemen to qualify themselves for Indian service in its various forms, because they are naturally more fitted to serve in high and responsible posi- tions than the offspring of the lower classes/' Several of the causes for unrest mentioned in these remarks have already been dealt with in this and previous chapters. The complexity and the unimaginativeness of the administration have already occupied a space which can be defended only by the importance of the subject. The rise in prices, disproportionate even to the remarkable rise in wages, is, it is promised, to form speedily the subject of a special inquiry by the Government SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 205 of India. Several of the forces mentioned are such as are inevitable when alien civilizations come into contact and in particular when a civilization, remarkable chiefly for its insistence on material comfort and progress, but also noteworthy for free- dom of thought and a strong bias towards material- ism and pleasure, influences a land of asceticism, contemplation, and metaphysical idealism. These are forces the result of whose play and interplay cannot be exactly foreseen or accurately predicted. The course of adaptation to changed environment is troublous and perplexed. Suffer- ing must ensue in the course of transformation. That energy towards excellence which has to adapt itself to its altered material must entail self- control, restraint, and self-sacrifice, all of them privative qualities and therefore painful. It must be left ultimately to the laws of nature and the spirit of humanity to transcend the difficulties and come again to a closer unity with the given data. But it is for the governors to mitigate the transition, to apply the anaesthetics which are at hand, and, as far as possible, to modify the new forces in conformity with the habits already opera- tive. The lessons of history must be read with care and understanding, and that which is essential to our ideals of honour, justice, and goodness dis- tinguished from the temporal and episodic means by which for ourselves in our historic circum- stances we have achieved them. Representation 206 INDIA OF TO-DAY of classes may be attained by more means than one, and a parliamentary suffrage may be ill- adapted to other peoples and other climes. The immanence of aristocracy and good life through the forms of theoretic equality which has been pre- served in Great Britain by a variety of circum- stances may in other countries prove impossible, and the attempt to work on the obsolete philo- sophic theories of Eousseau or of Bentham may end fatally. There are few things in India by which we have so far injured our administration as by the neglect of traditional superiority and hereditary rank. For over two thousand years the peoples of India have been familiar with caste, and for twelve hundred years the caste system has been stereo- typed in its present exaggerated and even un- healthy form. Since the dawn of history the countries which compose it have been ruled by chiefs and princes. Its philosophies even those which maintain a theory of dualism have been strongly idealistic and have maintained the doc- trines of progressive development and evolution. Both in theory and in practice they cannot agree with the antinomian theories of material indi- vidualism. But for fifty years India has been ruled by administrators who, in the aggregate, accepted and acknowledged the teachings of individualism and material liberalism, who believed in those SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 207 doctrines of utilitarianism which are now heard only from old men, and who concurred in the dis- torted historical views popularized by the copious rhetoric of Macaulay. In India those views have been accepted and exaggerated by the lower middle-class, which found in them the basis for their own advancement at the cost of the well- being of the State. The doctrines were repudiated at once by the nobility and gentry and by those labouring masses who constitute the vast majority of the inhabitants. Hence has risen that proverb which is heard in every village and in every palace in India : "In the British Eaj the sweeper is king/' In very truth, the beggar has mounted on horseback, and the steed has wrought havoc along the road. A greatly disgusted aristocracy, a largely enslaved peasantry, and even the very class of parvenus itself discontented, those are the moral fruits of fifty years of Liberal theories hastily and imprudently applied. But the mischief has not yet gone so far that it cannot be repaired. The princes have been generously treated and are loyal at the core. The vast growth of material prosperity has, to a con- siderable extent, counteracted the evils of immature commercial individualism. And to a degree greater than can well be described must be thanked the innate good sense, the fidelity, and the gratitude of the vast majority of Indians of all classes. But the time has come when reform cannot longer be 208 INDIA OF TO-DAY delayed, and recent events, by their sensational vividness, have opportunely pointed the moral. The recognition of traditional social distinction, the encouragement of the gentry and upper- classes, the administrative and educational re- forms already suggested, these are steps which can no longer be postponed, if the real discontent in the country compared to which the revilings of a section of the educated class are as froth on the waves is to be finally allayed. Of the urgent necessity that there is every- where for introducing legislation to prevent the passage of land out of the hands of agriculturists into those of the usurer, the trader, and the lawyer, a great deal has already been said. But it cannot be too often repeated that in the alienation of land and the depression of the free yeoman into the servile tenant a change due to our introduction of free and unlimited contract, of absolute owner- ship of property, and of a complex and exotic Civil Law we have ourselves erected the most inflam- mable and ultimately by far the most dangerous material for discontent. The subject of the Civil Law and Procedure introduced by our administration into India is at once too complicated and too technical for dis- cussion within the limits of this book. But it may be said that there can be little doubt that the body of English-made Civil Law however equit- able in intention and however suitable to the SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 209 decision of complex commercial cases or the incidents of a troubled succession or a difficult question of Torts has not proved suitable for the settlement of the petty debt cases mostly between peasants and moneylenders which form the bulk of legal cases in India. In one year alone the number of civil cases amounted to nearly 2,800,000, of which more than half were for the recovery of petty debts under Rs.50, or about 3. A great deal more than half the total number of cases were decided without trial and without contest. It is, there- fore, apparent that more than half the total number of civil cases were cases in which usurers simply used the courts as a collecting agency for petty debts of less than 3 each. These figures alone point to a misuse of Civil Law, which can, it is to be feared, be ascribed alone to the unsuitability of our legal system for India. That this is so has by this time been largely admitted even by the authorities who have some natural professional bias in favour of the existing regime. The remedy is not easy to find, but it is clear that if our rule is to be justified by its results the remedy must at least be sought. Without doing more than pressing the necessity for reform, it may, perhaps, be suggested that the decision of petty debt cases, in which agriculturists are in- volved, by the executive of the district, would be in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the population and in agreement with ancient 210 INDIA OF TO-DAY traditions. The recommendations of a power- ful commission appointed by Lord Curzon and consequent changes in adjective Civil Law have, however, taken steps in the right direction, whose operation for some years may, perhaps, be watched without attempting further change which, though congenial to Eastern practice, may prove unpalatable in England. One change, however, can and should at once be made. That change is the abolition of imprison- ment for debt one of the anachronisms which survives in India as, under disguise, it does in England. In India it is peculiarly pernicious, as it is used in conjunction with other circumstances peculiarly favourable to the capitalist, simply as a weapon in terrorem over the head of the unfortunate debtor. To realize its full effect, circumstances peculiar to India must be taken into account the illiteracy and ignorance of the debtor, the astute- ness with which the creditor uses the instruments of forgery and perjury, his thorough grasp of legal procedure and of the laws of evidence, the fact that the judge is in nearly every case the caste-fellow of the creditor, and the great horror of imprison- ment entertained by the debtor. The abolition of imprisonment for debt is, therefore, a measure which should be undertaken at the earliest possible convenience. The protection of the agriculturist against the capitalist is not one which lends itself to the SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 211 eloquence of agitators; for these agitators come from the class which has enriched itself by means of education and business capacity at the expense of the vast agricultural mass of the country. But the question is one which must be insisted upon by every lover of India ; and the multiplication of dispossessed farmers would furnish the agitators ultimately with the readiest instrument for active sedition and uprising. For similar reasons I refrain also from dis- cussing here the complicated and impracticable Criminal Procedure which to a large extent renders nugatory an excellent Penal Code and a valuable law of evidence. Yet the comparative failure of our Criminal Procedure is to a considerable extent to blame for such spirit of lawlessness as exists, as well as for the tragical travesties of justice which have occurred in several sedition trials. I have now, necessarily shortly, but to the best of my ability, traversed the field of Indian society and administration as, after fifty years of Crown rule, it now is. It has been shown that under British rule, India has attained a standard of Government and justice and a height of material prosperity previously unknown and undreamt of. An examination of the fiscal system and of the methods of taxation has shown that our Govern- ment is impregnable on that side. But we have reason to fear that in recent years the administration 212 INDIA OF TO-DAY has become too complex and departmental, too exotic and impersonal. The immature extension of an ill-conceived and incomplete secondary education, disproportionate to the manner of primary education, and confined to a futile literary course, has been proved mischievous and inappro- priate. The neglect of the indigenous aristocracy and the adoption of foreign and unsuitable theories of equality have occasioned a grave and injurious displacement of authority and a general social upheaval. Finally, we have found that conditions, inevitable in the contact and friction of alien civilizations and the rapidity and growth of communications, have led to a higher standard of comfort, to capitalism, and to accompanying economic dangers. It has been made clear that what discontent has arisen is not due to want of equity or justice in our administration, and is not caused by any single administrative measure. It is also abundantly clear that the discontent voiced by the native Press and the counsel suggested by agitators is diametrically opposed in character and in purpose to the feelings entertained by the vast majority of the population. But administrative errors, made with the best of intentions, in the adherence to doctrinaire principles and inappropriate theories, have undoubtedly occurred and have given rise to another but more serious feeling of unrest, to the silent emotion of many classes who, loyal at heart, SOCIAL AND OTHER GRIEVANCES 213 gaze amazed at the ruin of their traditions and the removal of their landmarks. It remains to be asked, whether, in addition to the suggestions for local and detailed administra- tive reform already thrown out in the course of this book, any further measures are possible, consistent with the ideals of English statesman- ship, to secure to India that influence in Imperial councils which she merits, to stimulate loyalty, and to reward that patient fidelity, that sound sense, and that unswerving confidence of the vast majority of the Indian peoples, for which no praise is too high and no eulogy too extravagant. These are questions with which I shall endeavour briefly to deal in the next and final chapter of this book. CHAPTEE X POLITICAL REFOEMS " WHAT is to be done ? " are the words which must be inscribed at the head of this chapter, as they must be the words with which every Indian administrator should begin his study of the present situation. Having in view the wonderful advance in material prosperity and in security to life and property, contemplating the progress in Indian education and its stability, all are now agreed that the time is ripe further to extend our policy of giving the King's Indian subjects a larger part in the development of their own country. " What is to be done ? " Lord Morley attempted a partial answer. If I confess that I cannot find his answer wholly satisfactory, it is not because I differ from him in the need of action, but because I do not find what he has done wholly suitable to the conditions of India. Again, then, I must ask, as he has asked, " What is to be done ? " For it is essential that while granting the fullest exten- sion possible to the principle of representation not necessarily by quasi-Parliamentary institutions, POLITICAL REFORMS 215 or through a suffrage, whether limited or unlimited, at the same time any false step should be avoided which may check the advance, moral and material, of India as a whole, or which may even throwback the great work of the progressive development of people and of country. Now the first and foremost duty which the British nation, as governors of the Indies, have to perform is undoubtedly the firm and steadfast maintenance of order and of security. It is too often overlooked that the tolerance of seditious writing in the Press and of disloyal agitation on the platform is not merely a menace to our rule, but is a neglect of duty which must end as it ended not long ago in the Bombay strike in the unmerited suffering of the foolish and the innocent. Tolerance of political vice in an alien land and amongst peoples unaccustomed to free discussion is a fault, is a crime committed by us against unborn generations of Indians, against the peasants who will be pillaged, against the gentry and noble- men who will be deposed and punished, against the women and children who will watch their husbands and their fathers shot in street riots, for which, not they, but the weakness of Government was primarily responsible. There were riots in Tinevelly and Tuticorin a few years ago, which the timely deportation of Bepin Chandra Pal could have averted. The removal of the principal agitators in Bengal would have saved bloodshed, 2i6 INDIA OF TO-DAY suffering and unhappiness. Even politicians some- times allow that order must be maintained by all means and by the most strenuous measures. No excuse of conformity with English political pressure can be pleaded by the statesman who, from any motive or on whatever principle, neglects this work. The British nation, before the tribunal of that Deity Who gave it dominion and empire, before those generations still unborn, whose pros- pects lie in the hollow of its hand, by every sanction of humanity and by every pledge of honour, is in duty bound with all firmness and in calm strength steadfastly and consistently to repress evil and to uphold the good. Granted steady and firm rule, there remains a reform which is both imperative and easy of achievement. Fifty years of Crown Eule, of easier and more frequent communication with England, and of more intimate acquaintance with justice and good government, have made possible the more complete fulfilment of the noble pledge given by the late and venerable Queen Victoria. Her words are memorable : " It is our will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be fully and impartially admitted to the offices in our services, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education,'ability, and integrity duly to discharge." It cannot now be contended that in the year 1912, there are not Indians perfectly qualified by their education, ability and POLITICAL REFORMS 217 integrity to fulfil appointments from which, as things have been, they have been excluded. After all that has been said, it is surely unnecessary to add that their qualifications cannot be judged merely by examination, and that rank is, at least in India, a necessary concomitant of ability. But with those provisoes, it cannot for a moment be doubted, unless by a mind unduly biassed by service traditions, that there are many Indians as well qualified as an Englishmen to fulfil the duties of a medical officer, an engineer, or even a judge. Many of them do indeed at the present moment hold these high appointments. But it must be admitted that, as things are, the tone of the administration is unfavourable to the multiplication of such appointments, and that they are apt to be regarded rather as the exceptional recognition of unusual merit than as the regular furtherance of a necessary principle. In the future it may be hoped that it will be regarded as necessary to alter the whole tone of the administration in this respect and to give to Indians an actual preference to appoint- ments, the duties of which they are able to fulfil, and to reserve for Englishmen only such executive posts in the district magistracy and in the police, in the army and in the higher justiciary as cannot at present be adequately filled by Indians. At the same time it is clear that it is necessary for Indians as it is desirable for Englishmen that 218 INDIA OF TO-DAY they be selected by a system of preliminary nomination, followed by competitive examination. It is unfortunate that the commission appointed to investigate and report on the Public Services has to such an extent been packed by the present Government, and should include in its members one whose public utterances have shaken the confidence both of better class Indians and of Englishmen in his sound judgment and impartiality. Of recent innovations in the extension of Indian representation, the inclusion by Lord Morley of two Indians in the Indian Council of the Secretary of State is a measure which can be welcomed by all opinions. Eecommended by the high character and the intellectual distinction of the nominees, the step is distinctly one of advance and improvement. The duties of members of the Indian Council are primarily consultative. They are the advisers of the Secretary of State, but the power of issuing orders rests solely with the Secretary himself. It has been an obvious advantage an advantage which must be strongly felt by a Secretary of State in troublous times to be able personally to consult two Indians of experience and attainment specially selected for that purpose by the Government of India and himself. But the success of this experiment gives no material for inferring a similar possibility of POLITICAL REFORMS 219 advantage by appointing an Indian on the Viceroy's Council. The powers of those Councillors are not advisory, but executive. In all but the most important measures, the power of ultimate sanction or veto rests with each member separately and individually. Their corporate authority is final to the decision of nearly every project. They have in the fullest sense the powers of Cabinet Ministers, both collectively in Council and individually as the heads of Government Departments. In addition, it must be recollected that a Member of Council in India is surrounded by an amount of pomp and ceremony far exceeding the humbler surroundings of an English Cabinet Minister. His position is externally indicated by the salutes of guns, which are the invariable accompaniment of his tours of inspection, or rather his splendid progresses. Princes and rulers do him honour, and the highest of Government officials have to frequent his audiences. Now we have seen that India is a vast continent, peopled by different races, each with their own interests and their own ideals. It is a country, a large portion of which, except for the claims of suzerainty of the paramount power, is under treaty independent in the sway of its own chiefs. British India also boasts its proud nobility, the descendants of former independent rulers. Each prince, each noble, one might say every Indian of every class, is proud of the exclusive 220 INDIA OF TO-DAY traditions of his race, his caste, his religion and his family. To the English official, as the living symbol of royal authority, and of alien impartiality, they are willing to pay allegiance and a distant reverence. But the Indian Member of Council is too near to escape the danger of exciting contempt, dislike or rivalry. For it is hardly possible to find any individual Indian who can be capable of representing all these interests, all these various races, all these religions, without provoking jealousy and mistrust amongst men who are not of his own caste, creed and sect ; there are few individual Indians so pre-eminent that chiefs will be willing to do them honour, or vie in humbling themselves to their behests ! The experiment of appointing a single Indian member a member necessarily of the middle- class to the Viceroy's Executive Council is therefore a measure that cannot be considered altogether prudent or politic. Let him be a Hindu and the Mohammedans do not accept him as their representative. If he be a Mussulman, his appointment arouses discontent and heart- burning amongst all Hindus. Be he one or the other, his office is viewed with suspicion at once by the feudatory or allied chiefs, and by the no less proud nobility of British India. The tendency is to appoint a lawyer and, that being so, he can hardly represent impartially the interests of the great landholders or of the commercial classes. POLITICAL REFORMS 221 As one of the middle-classes, his views must, to an extent barely credible in England, be opposed to those of the mass of the agricultural population, and to the interests of the backward and aboriginal tribes. A Bengali is as little acceptable to the great mass throughout the country as would a Eajput, a Gurkha, a Madrassi or a Burman be accepted by the pampered inhabitants of Bengal. It must also be remembered that practically the whole weight of expert Indian opinion was against the appointment of an Indian on the Viceroy's Executive Council. What were the reasons which led to the neglect of this advice ? Lord Morley, indeed, told the nation that he consulted the Indian Govern- ment. But the process of consultation was shrouded in mystery; and it is no reflection on Lord Morley to doubt whether his project was founded upon their deliberately expressed opinion. We may be pardoned if we suspect rather that a doctrinaire theory was forced, hastily and without due time for full reflection, upon a baffled and hesitating Government. It is at least certain that nearly the whole experience of those who had practical knowledge of India was against the appointment of an Indian to the Executive Council of the Viceroy; an it is to be feared that further experience of the measure has to a large extent proved the reasonableness of their apprehensions. 222 INDIA OF TO-DAY The changes with regard to the Legislative Councils are also in the form adopted of rather doubtful benefit. It is true that any scheme by which, in the Councils of India, the various classes that inhabit the land may, in their fitting and appropriate proportions, be represented and con- sulted, must be welcomed and supported. Kepre- sentative Councils which might be freely con- sulted for advice should undoubtedly be found by the side of the Viceroy, and of Governors. A scheme had indeed been outlined for the constitu- tion of Advisory Councils, nominated and elected from every rank and sect of Indian society ; and the details of this scheme were recently on the Legislative anvil of the Government of India. This measure would have formed a remarkable delegation of power, and a singular pledge of mutual confidence. It was, however, covertly and even overtly opposed by that educated middle- class, whose real aim is the extension of their own oligarchic sway. It is now doubtful whether the scheme will ever mature to legislation. It is at least difficult to conceive of its becoming a living reality, now that the Legislative Council has been further strengthened and extended. The Legislative Councils exist only for British India, and are not even nominally representative of the Native States. Their elections are con- ducted on narrow franchises which virtually limit their elective membership to a few castes, mostly POLITICAL REFORMS 223 of the English-speaking merchant or lawyer class. It is, therefore, a mistake to conceive of their extension as any great step towards wider representation. On the contrary, it may easily tend to be a step towards oligarchy, a narrow middle-class and urban oligarchy, of all kinds the most oppressive in such a country as India. It is desirable even now to modify this constitution in such a way as to ensure the preponderance of the aristocracy and landed interest as a whole in the Councils, and to secure also the adequate represen- tation of true Mussulman opinions throughout India. The principle of rational and suitable national representation would be capable of even further and more significant extension for the advantage both of India and of Great Britain. The present constitution of the permanent Judicial Committee of the House of Lords marks the way, and the creation of Indian life-peers by the selection of the Sovereign from the most able members of the Advisory Councils is the last step required to ensure the adequate representation in Imperial councils of Indian opinion, and to satisfy the political conscience of Great Britain. When the time comes and it must come soon when there is a permanent Imperial Committee of the House of Lords, there will be found on the benches of the highest council of the realm and empire, side by side with the nominees for Canada, Australia, 224 INDIA OF TO-DAY and South Africa, noblemen and gentlemen representative of the varied interests of the Indian peoples. My final words may be summed very briefly in the old axiom, Festina lente, the motto of that excellent statesman and hard worker for his country's benefit, the late Earl of Onslow. Change is a necessary condition for every country and every individual. We can none of us remain the same for any lengthy period, though most of us probably would wish that, as far as we ourselves go, the clock would not get on so fast. What we have to aim for is to adapt ourselves to changed conditions with as little friction and disturbance to ourselves and others as can reasonably be arranged, and to endeavour so to guide the course of events that each change may be for the benefit of our country and our successors without unduly upsetting the institutions or the individuals who are immediately affected by the new arrangements made. In a country like India, which inherits tra- ditions, habits and customs handed down for so many generations, any violent changes and altera- tions are to be deprecated, and especially should no experimental Western methods of government be tried except with all due caution and precau- tion. In approaching the many deeply important problems which must be solved, and wisely solved, if our rule in India is to be continued and developed POLITICAL REFORMS 225 for the permanent benefit of His Majesty's subjects of every race, colour, religion and caste; the wisest, the most capable, and the most truly patriotic patriotic in the sense of being willing to sacrifice everything, whether pecuniary or social advantage, health, convenience, ease and comfort for the single purpose of doing what they believe to be the best for the lasting improvement of their fellow- countrymen must combine and give their constant attention and their most careful forethought to the direction of affairs and in their recommendation as to any changes that may be brought about. Any Government in power in England must consult the best opinion of the trained intellects of the Indian Empire, and while not necessarily blindly following the whole of the advice or recommenda- tions presented to them, must do their utmost, after careful and deliberate enquiry and considera- tion, to meet the measures most immediately needed and most calculated to effect a beneficent purpose, and must equally give further considera- tion with a view to extending beneficial legislation in the future. I personally am very hopeful of the result. Immense strides have been made in the past, immense improvements are still being made in the moral and material welfare of the people, and if Governments and individuals can only be restrained from rash and hasty interference in matters which they can but imperfectly and partially understand, I look forward to a great Q 226 INDIA OF TO-DAY and glorious future for the Indian Empire built up on the sure foundation of the combined efforts, the mutual goodwill, and the hearty cordiality of all who are devoting their lives and energies to that great country's welfare. INDEX ADMINISTRATION, 98 Advisory councils, 222 Agra, 65 Ahmedabad, 119 Ahmed Khan, Sir Sayad, 190 Ajai Singh, 15 Ajmer, 16, 69 Ajmer temples, 19 Akbar, 16, 34, 146 Ala-ud-din, 12, 32 Alexander, Mr. and Mrs., 75 Aligarh College, 190 Ali Musjid, 58 Amber, 29 Amber Palace, 30 Ambligola camp, 78 Area, 82 Assam, 128 Atkinson, Genl. Frank, 78 Aurungzeb, 36 BABER, 33 Bahadur Shah, 15 Baily, Mr. and Miss, 75 Baji Rao, Peishwa, 66 Bangalore, 77 Banked wealth, 176 Barhampur, 39 Barrackpur, 39 Bazar Valley, 57 Benares, 72 ; Maharajah's hospi- tality, 72, 74 Bengal, 188, 194 Bengal, Partition of, 124 Bepin Chandra Pal, 215 Berar, 188 Bhamo, 76 Bhandarkar, Dr., 194 Bhimsi, 12 Bhim Singh, 46 Bihar, 127 Black buck shooting, 46, 74 Bombay, 4,78, 118,188 Bombay Land Revenue Code Amendment Act, 155 Bruce, Captain, 65 Burmah, 76, 188 Burning ghats, 73 Butler, Sir Harcourt, K.C.I.E., 68 Byculla, 5 CALCUTTA, 76, 118 Camel carriage, 49 Camel market, 58, 63 Canning, Lord, 38 Caste system, 86 Caves of Elephanta, 5 Cawnpore, 66, 118 Cawnpore massacres, 60 Chakia Camp, 74 Chaukidar, 54 Child's funeral rite, 73 Chitnavis, Hon. Mr., 202 Chitor, 11 Chittagong, 127 Chota Nagpur, 127 Civil law grievances, 208 Clarke, Sir George, 5 Clayton, Dr., Mrs., and Miss, 60 Colvin, Mr. and Mrs., 16, 17 228 INDEX Colvin, Sir Walter, 66 Cornwallis, Lord, 162 Coryat, Tom, 34 Countries of India, 82 Cunard, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, 9, 41 Curzon of Kedleston, Earl, 40, 108, 111, 112, 131, 138, 151, 155, 158, 166, 171, 172, 174, 177, 186, 189, 191, 193, 196 DACCA, 127 Dalhousie, Lord, 38 Dargah, Ajmer, The, 20 Darjeeling, 76 Davis, Mr., 71 Deane, Sir Harold and Lady, 62 Delhi, 32 Delhi Palace, 34 De Lisle, Col. and Mrs., 71 Dwan-i-Khas, Delhi, The, 45 Duff, Capt., 78 Dunlop Smith, Col. Sir James, 79 EDUCATION, 181 Educational expenditure, 188, 195 Empress of India, Queen Victoria, 40,49 Exports, 170 FAMINE Committees, 18, 69, 94 Famine relief measures, 95 Ferrar, Capt., 75 Fort Jamrud, 55, 56 Fuller, Sir Bamfylde, 135 GHATS of the Ganges, bathing and burning, 73 Glyn, Major Geoffrey, 78 Gokhale, Mr., 166 Graham, Mr. and Mrs., 4, 78 Griffen, Mr. and Mrs., 71 Guest House, Udaipur, 6 HAMIR, 15 Hanuman, 32 Hargreaves, Mr., 64 Havelock Allan, Sir Henry, 71 Head of the District, 95, 96, 98, 104, 107, 113, 201 Herbert, Col., 20 Hill, Mr. Claud, 11 History, Brief sketch of, 85-93 Holmes, Mr. and Mrs., 75 Howrah, 118 Humayun, 33 Humayun's Tomb, 45 Hunter, Gen. Sir Archibald, 16 Hut of Two-and-a-half Days, 19 Hyderabad, 118 IBBETSON, Sir Denzil, 49 Imports, 170 Imprisonment for debt, 210 Income Tax, 166 Increase of population, 119 Indian Civil Service, 97, 109 Indian Mutiny, 38 Introductory and Descriptive of Tour, 1 Iron Pillar, The, 45 Irrigation, 176, 45 JAIN Tower of Fame, 15 Jaipur, 20 Jaipur, Maharajah of, 20, 21 Jaipur Observatory, 22 Jai Singh, 22 Jama Musjid, Delhi, The, 41 Jehangir, 34, 36 Jenkins, Col. and Mrs., 11 Jopling, Mr., 71 INDEX 229 KALI, The goddess, 30 Karachi, 119 Kauravas, The, 32 Keppel, Sir Ross, 57 Khwajah Mohi-ud-Din, Shrine of, 20 Khyber Pass, 55 Khrishna, 32 Kutub Minar, The, 45 LAHORE, 49, 119 La Motte, Col. and Mrs., 71 Land Revenue, 139 Languages, 85 Lawley, Sir Arthur and Lady, 77 Lawrence, Lord, 182 Lawrence, Sir Henry, 39 Lawrence, Sir Walter, 79 Leake, Colonel, 75 Legislative Councils, 222 Lewis, Miss, 72 Life peers, Creation of, 223 Local self-government, 115 Lucknow, 39, 68 Lundi Kotal, 61 MACDONNBLL, Lord, 186 MacNab, Major and Mrs., 76 Madras, 77, 188, 194 Madura, 119 Mahabharata, The, 32 Mahrattas, 36 Mahseer fishing, 8 Maine, Sir Henry, 125 Malabar Hill, 4 Mandalay, 76 Marmarabad, Rajah of, 71 Marshall, Mrs., 72 Mayo College, 18 McGregor, Capt. and Mrs., 60 Meerut, 39 Meredith, Mr. and Mrs., 41, 46 Mill industry, 174 Minto, Earl and Countess of, 76 Missionary schools, 190 Morley, Viscount, 198, 214, 218, 221 Moti Musjid, The, 34 Muharram Festival, 79 Mul Chand's shop, 63 Munshi of Maharana of Udaipur, 6,7 Mutiny, 38, 39, 40, 69 Mymensing, 127 Mysore, 77 ; Maharajah's hospi- tality, 77 NABHA, Rajah of, 204 Nadir Shah, 37 Nana Sahib, 66 Natives, number of educated, 120 Native workmen, 7 O'DONNELL, Mr., 151, 155, 160, 192 Onslow, Earl of, 224 Ormerod, Mr., 75 Oudh, 38 PADMINI, 12 Pandavas, The, 32 Paniput, Battle of, 37 Parsees, 5 Partition of Bengal, 124 Pathans, 51 Pendlebury, Mr., 77 Permanent settlement of Bengal, 162 Peshawar, 53 Pig-sticking at Jaipur, 23 Pindrawul, Rajah of, 66 Political grievances, 199 Political reforms, 214 Poona, 194 230 INDEX Population, 82 Population, Density of, 83 . Primary Education, 188, 196 Prosperity, 172 Proverbs, 61, 207 Punjab, 85, 188 Punjab Land Alienation Act, 155 QUADIPUR, 46 Queen Victoria proclaimed Em- press of India, 40 Queen Victoria, Jubilee Statue, Lahore, 49 RAILWAYS, 177 Rajputs, 11 Rajput Talukdars, 157 Rangoon, 76, 119 Rawul Pindi, 64 Religions, 84 Ridge, Delhi, The, 42 Richards, Mr. Justice and Mrs., 75 Roads, 178 Robertson, Capt., 49 Roe, Sir Thomas, 36 Royal Commission on Public Services, 218 Royal Durbar, 40 Rumbha Rana, 15 Rural and Urban Population, 117 Ryotwari System, 144 SALISBURY, Marquis of, 169 Salt Tax, 166 Sambhur shooting, 75 Sayad Hossein Bilgrami, Nawab, 194 Secretary of State's Council, 218 Secunderabad, 77 Shah Alam, 37 Shah Jehan, 36 Shere Khan, 33 Simpson, Mr. and Mrs., 64 Singh, Pertab, 27 Social grievances, 200 Spooner, Dr., 64 Strachey, Sir R., 162, 167 Strong, Capt., 23 Student Class, 183, 186, 201 St. Xavier's College, 190 Syed Vikar Ali, 65 TAJ MAHAL, The, 65 Talukdari system, The, 141, 147, 157 Taxation, 139, 163 Temple Arhai Dinka Jhompra T 19 Tenancy Acts, 163 Thorburn, Mr., 154 Tiger shooting, 78 Timor, the Tartar, 33 Tinevelly, 215 Tower of Victory, 15 Towers of Silence, 5 Tughlakabad, 33 Tuticorin, 215 UDAIPUR, 6 Udai Singh, 15 United Provinces, 188 Universities, 183 Universities Bill, 1 92 VICEROY'S Council, 219 WATSON, Mr. and Mrs., 71 Wheeler, Sir Hugh, 67 Williams, Col. and Mrs., 64 Wood, Mr. and Mrs. Evelyn, 71 YULE, Sir J., 125 ZAKKA Khels, The, 57 Zemindari system, 144 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES ANIJ SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 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