The second factor in England's supremacy has been her immense military and material superiority over any force in India. The English army in India has been maintained in the vicinity of seventy-five thousand men, not at first glance a large force to dominate three hundred millions, but ample as long as it is in possession of all the artillery and all the higher officers of the supplementary Sepoy forces, and when backed by a prestige that has never been allowed to be marred by an unretrieved defeat, and faced by a disarmed and hopelessly divided population. What the attitude of the natives toward the English, their work, and their dominion has been, is exceedingly difficult to generalize upon. Very few English writers have contended that English rule was popular.' Most seem to have innately the feeling expressed by W. T. Thornton in the Cornhill Magazine in 1871, when he wrote: We have only to ask how we ourselves should like it if, the British Islands happening to become outlying appendages of the new Prussian Empire, no native-born Briton were suffered to hold a commission in the army or to rise above a second-class clerkship in the civil service, or above a county court judgeship in the law. Would any or all of the real and substantial advantages that might possibly accompany Prussian annexation-would completest reform of railway mismanagement or fullest security against garrotting or widest diffusion of intellectual and aesthetic culture-be accepted as compensation for such blockage of all careers which ordinary ambition most affects? Would not baffled longings turn rapidly into bitter animosity, engendered first among those ardent spirits by whom opinion is formed and directed and gradually accepted by the docile multitudes who think and feel in all public matters as popular leaders bid them ?2 In 1882 Sir Richard Temple worked out the following classification which probably represents the general opinion of the time:3 The actively loyal classes were: 1. The princes and chiefs of the native states. 2. The banking, trading, and industrial classes. 3. The zamindars and landholders of permanently settled estates. For some English estimates of the attitude of the natives see: “Life in India,' Fraser's Magazine, LXXX (1869), 346; M. Townsend, op. cit., p. 798; Sir H. J. S. Cotton, "Some Indian Problems,” East and West Magazine, I, No. 2 (1902), 1198–1205; "Proceedings of the East Indian Association," Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, 3d. Ser., XXI (1906), 355; Sir Bampfylde Fuller, "Indian Aspirations," Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, XL (1909), 366. P. Kennedy, "Bitter India," Forum, XLIII (1910), 107 et seq.; "S," "Indian Anarchism," East and West Magazine, XII (1913), 761-67. 2 W. T. Thornton, "National Education in India," Cornhill Magazine, XXIII (1871), 294. 3 Sir Richard Temple, Men and Events of My Time in India, (1882), p. 504. The passively loyal classes were: 1. The peasant proprietors and cultivators. 2. The laborers. The mixed classes, of which many were loyal but some the reverse, were: 1. The educated classes. 2. The native aristocracy in the British territories. 3. The Hindu and Mohammedan priesthood. The classes which were excitable or ready for mischief were: 1. The fanatics. 2. The hangers-on of the courts and camps. 3. The mob. Of these classes he believed that the passively loyal, which included two-thirds of the population, would support the government but would not fight for it. Whatever the accuracy of Sir Richard Temple's analysis may have been, it serves in a rough way to indicate the general alignment of the classes and shows how difficult any generalization is for all divisions and epochs. The immense mass of the population, as far as those who are in a position to know testify, are in the words of Sir A. C. Lyall "eminently conservative, otherwise good natured and quite willing to fall in with the whims of their incomprehensible rulers. . . . [they] are the most easily governed [people] in the world if you don't touch their worship, and don't tax them grievously." Certainly beyond rioting at times when their religion is molested, they toil and even starve without a murmur, much less a rising against the government which in such times labors to provide relief. Of late years only, has there been manifested a tendency toward outbursts of a political nature, and these have been confined almost without exception to the populace of the large cities. Among the upper classes there have been, it would seem, three prevailing types of attitude. The first is represented by an article in the Jam e Jamshed, a Gujarati daily of Bombay, of October 31, 1887. It read: There is no doubt that the natives of India are loyal to the backbone, and they would not shrink to die, if needs be for the British, but if the ruling race were to sympathize more closely with the native public, every native from end to end of India would think it would be his sacred duty to fight for the supremacy of the British rule in India.2 1 Sir Mortimer Durand, Life of Sir A. C. Lyall, p. 227. 2 Voice of India, V (1887), 585. The second is a more lukewarm feeling, which, while not amounting to out and out aversion, is discontented. The following specimen is from the Amrita Bazar Patrika, a Hindu weekly published in English, at Calcutta. The date is November 6, 1884. The rough insulting and often brutal conduct of many of the ruling race notoriously tends to alienate the minds of the Indians. But yet that only adds salt to the wound-the wound itself being due to some other cause. The real and substantial reason why the Indians do not feel friendly towards the English is the unequal political status of the two. And so long as natives are not allowed to share in the administration of the country on equal and important terms with the English, so long lukewarmness and jealousy would be the result.' The third type of opinion is represented by the aphorism, "It would be better for the people of India to be governed by their own corrupt countrymen than by the however angelic European 'leeches."" In this connection there is an important distinction to be noted between liking for, or devotion to, English rule as such and preference for it over against the domination by the czar or other representative of European imperialism.3 The following selections from the native press of the 1880's are in point. On February 2, 1885, the Indian Nation, a Calcutta weekly, said: A successful invasion of the country by the Russians would mean to the English the loss of a certain amount of revenue and a certain number of appointments. To the Indians it would mean either the loss of life or the loss of everything which makes life worth living. . . . . The English may afford to lose India. We cannot afford to exchange English government for Russian.4 The Indian Mirror, a Calcutta daily, on March 10, 1885, wrote: When the genius of the oriental races frets and chafes under the silken chains of British rule, the mildest despotism on the face of the earth, imagine what would be their fate under the iron fetters and terrible knout with which Russia tames her refractory subjects.5 The Swadeshi Mitram, a Tamul weekly of Madras, on January 19, 1885, said: "There is nothing more despotic in Europe than the government. of Russia. We should all unite in our prayer to protect us from the Scourge of Russia." I 996 1 Voice of India, II (1884), 699. 2 S. N. Singh, op. cit., p. 606. John D. Rees, The Real India, p. 189. 4 Voice of India, III (1885), 60. 5 Ibid., p. 107. 6 Ibid., p. 65. In general the Mohammedans have been better reconciled than the Hindus to English rule. This difference has been generally ascribed to the backwardness of the Mohammedans and the relative fewness of the educated individuals among them, a condition which led them to follow the guidance of Sir Ahmed Khan and feel that their best interests were to make common cause with the English, as an offset to the competition of the Hindus. On the whole this view is probably true, for with the spread of education in recent years among the Mohammedans the distinction seems to be passing. Another significant aspect of the attitude of the natives, is the personal feeling for the reigning monarch. It has been one of the most important functions of His Majesty to issue from his seclusion to dazzle his Indian subjects into enthusiastic loyalty. The proclamation of the royal title at a great durbar in 1877 on the eve of the Afghan War, when India was restless and almost aquiver, and the visit of the King and Queen to India, in 1911, to assume their titles at the grand durbar at Delhi are but two instances of the King being used effectively as a trump card to play upon the peculiar oriental mental weakness for the personal element in government. CHAPTER II THE TRANSFER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA The mutiny of 1858 The transfer of the government of India to the Crown Reasons Pro, Mr. Bright Contra, Colonel Sykes India Bill No. I India Bill No. II India Bill No. III The government established by the act of 1858 In England The English electorate, the ultimate source of power The governor-general Powers and restraints His Executive Council Administration The secretariat Provincial administration Types of provinces The lieutenant-governorships Subprovincial administration. The district officer His functions Executive Judicial Other district officials Subdivisions of the district Municipalities Villages Legislation The Queen's Proclamation of 1858 |