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M O D ER N IN D IA

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BY

SIR J. D. R E E S, K.C .I.E., C.V.O., M.P.

SO M ETIM E A D D IT IO N A L M EM B ER OF T H E G O V ERN O R-G EN ERA L OF IN D IA 'S COUNCIL,
AND T R A N SL A T O R TO G O V ERN M EN T IN P E R S IA N , H IN D U ST A N I, T A M IL , AN D
T ELU G U -, H. S. A R A B IC ; R U SSIA N IN T E R P R E T E R ; M EM B ER OF T H E
ORDER OF S T . ST A N ISL A U S OF R U S S IA ; FELLO W OF T H E
U N IV E R S IT Y OF M AD RA S ; GOVERNOR OF T H E
U N IV E R S IT Y CO LLEG E OF W A LES

AU THO R OF “ T H E M A H O M ED A N S," “ th e R E A L IN D IA ," “ T H E D U K E OF C L A R E N C E

IN IN D IA ," “ JO U R N E Y FROM K A Z V E E N TO HAM AD AN IN NORTH P E R S IA ,
“ TO U RS IN IN D IA ,” E T C . E T C .

V i,
WITH MAP

LO N D O N : G EO R G E A L L E N & SONS
44 & 45 RATH BO N E PLACE
1910
[All rights reserved]
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Printed by B a l l a h t v m b , H ahscm &* Co.

At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh.

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D E D IC A T E D

TO

T H E E L E C T O R S OF T H E MONTGOMERY
BOROUGHS

V
W (S I .
o

P u blished u n d er the auspices o f the

L eague o f the E m pire

9
 o n

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«

NOTE

“ T he experiment must go forward. . . . We can­

not leave it unfinished if we would.” It is nearly
thirty years since Professor Seeley spoke these
words of Empire in his great series of lectures
on the “ Expansion of England.” What was only
felt then in an emotional way by a comparatively
small band of enthusiasts has to-day come home
to at least some millions of our people. In Seeley’s
day the Imperialist was the dreamer; now he is
the practical and clear-seeing man of affairs. The
reproach that our politicians, our historians, still
think of England, not of Greater Britain, as their
country has lost much of its sting since those
lectures were read at Cambridge by Seeley.
E o man of information or imagination really
supposes to-day that England could whistle off
the Colonies and “ become again, with perfect
comfort to herself, the old, solitary island of Queen
Elizabeth’s time— ‘ in a great pool a swan’s nest. ”
That was the strange delusion which arose, as the
historian pointed out, not through imagination, but
through the want of it.
More every year it becomes the wish, as it is
the duty, of every thinking British citizen to be
ix
U S J.1) MODERN INDIA V kl
_ y * -J
^^wsgfT informed, not only as to his own particular
land, but as to the British Empire as a whole.
What can they know of England who only
England know ? is truer to-day than ever it has
been. The Empire, with its tremendous problems
of government, defence, trade, and the handling
of the coloured races, is a theme of as great
and live value as any of the subjects studied at
school and college— the classics, English history
and geography, science, modern languages, mathe­
matics. We must learn “ to think imperially,”
or perish completely as an empire. The subject
cannot any longer be left out of the scheme of
study at our schools and universities; and it may
well be a subject of home training too.
The educated man of the future is sure to be
educated in the glorious subjects of India, Canada,
South Africa, Australasia; he will be alive to the
true meaning and great import of our position
and interests in the Far East, the Mediterranean,
the Pacific.
The aim of this series of books, therefore, is
to give people, young and old, at home and
throughout Greater Britain, a trustworthy, abso­
lutely authentic description of British interests,
resources, and life all over the Empire. Each
volume will be written by an acknowledged
authority on the subject. No regard will be paid
to party politics. The questions of Liberalism and
Conservatism do not come within the scope of
these books; it is only a question of Imperialism.
 -jr \
i f W * )! note r lQ T
• , j L
ifte idea is to describe the Colony, British
possession, or sphere of influence in its natural,
commercial, and social features ; and the authors
will give an account of its rise and growth.
“ Y esterday and T o -D a y in Canada,” by the Duke
of A rgyll ; “ Modern India,” by Sir J . D . Rees,
M .P. ; and “ South A frica,” by the R igh t Hon.
John X avier Merriman, of Cape Colony, will be
the opening books in the series.

THE ED ITO RS.

111 3 §L
9

PREFACE

T h is book has been written at the request of

the Publishers for their Empire series, and runs
upon lines suggested by them. It is, of course,
impossible, within the limits of one small volume,
to deal in other than a general and comprehensive
fashion with any of the great problems which arise
in connection with the administration of India.
I have endeavoured to touch upon most of the
important issues, and if I have done something to­
wards counteracting the exceedingly mischievous,
and deplorably unpatriotic, agitation which is
directed against our fellow-countrymen in India,
I shall be more than satisfied. I served in our
Eastern Empire for a quarter of a century, and
since retiring as a British Resident, and an
Additional Member of the Governor-General’s
Council, in 1900, have continued in and out of
Parliament to serve India to the best o f my
ability.
J . D. R EE S.
•IONTGOMERY, M ay I9IO.

xiii
 " /'"'I
tC S l ^ (fiT
X^gf

CO NTENTS
PAGE

N o t e ................................................................................................................... 1X
Pr e f a c e ............................................................................ xm
C IIA P .'
I. P h ysical A spects — P opulation — R e lig io n —
L anguages — E thnology — C aste . . . i

II. W ild L i f e ............................................................................20

III. G ame P reservatio n and F orest R eservatio n . 36
IV . F oundation of B r it ish G overnm ent . . 47
V. E conomics— T r a d e — T axatio n — E migration —
I n d u s t r i e s ....................................................................60
V I. A rm y — A nglo -R ussian C onvention . . . 85
V II. A dm inistratio n — D ecentralisatio n — L ocal
B oards — R e v en u e . . . . • .110
V III. T h e C iv il S er v ic e — E mployment of I ndians . 127
IX . E d u c a t i o n ............................................................................ *44
X. P r e se n t P o litical C onditions — S edition — P a r ­
titio n — S vadeshi — S v a r a j — B oycott
P p.ESS . XS6
X I. R eform s — I ndian C ouncils A ct
X II. S ocial L if e in I ndia — C a st e — R eligio n . .196
X J I I . N a t iv e S tates — I m p e r ia l S e r v ic e T roops —
B r it ish R e s id e n t s ............................................. 2I4
X IV . P ro g ress of th e L ast F if t y Y ea rs . . .228
* • f
I N D E X ....................................................................... 251
♦ XV
§( W Y s (C T
v Y S -Y y i c H j

MODE R N I N D I A
CH APTER I
P H Y S IC A L A S P E C T S —PO PU LA T IO N —R E L I G I O N -
L A N G U A G E S —E T H N O L O G Y —C A S T E

T he Indian Empire extends from the Himalayan

region of perpetual snow to the burning jungles of
Malabar, from the sandy wastes of Baluchistan
to the tropical regions of Lower Burma, and
beyond to the hills on the Chinese frontier.
In the north, the magnificent range of the
Himalayas, of a width from the centre to the
plains of the Ganges of ioo miles, and rising in
height to 29,000 feet, in the centre, the Vindhyas,
and along either coast-line, the Eastern and Western
Ghauts, are the most conspicuous mountains, and
neither north, south, east, nor west lacks a great
river which carries to the sea the abundant rainfall
of the monsoons.
Invaders from Central Asia reaching the Indus,
which they regarded as a sea, called the country
beyond that of the Hindus or Sindus. Hence
A
bn W JV MODERN INDIA (g T
by which convenient, but totally misle^td^^
mg, appellation we continue to describe the great
continent containing one-fifth of the inhabitants of
the globe.
The term as generally used now includes all the
countries over which the Indian Government rules,
up to the borders of Baluchistan, Afghanistan, China,
Tibet, and Siam.
Outside the true Indian Peninsula, but in close
relations with the Indian Empire, are parts of
Baluchistan, Afghanistan— which as a whole com­
prises 246,000 square miles, of which three-quar­
ters are mountain— Cashmere, the Himalayas, and
Burma.
All the invaders of India have come either
through Southern Baluchistan and the delta of
the Indus, by way of Kandahar to Sind, by way of
Ghazni to the Indus, or by Kabul to the Punjab.
From the sandy deserts of Baluchistan north­
wards runs the border district of the Pathan
Highlands, now part of the new North-West
Frontier Province, inhabited by wild tribes which
form a kind of buffer between Afghanistan proper
and British India.
T he general impression of India as a hot
country is derived from the climatic conditions of
the depression of the Ganges, which extends as
one broad, regular, alluvial surface from the delta
of that river to the delta of the Indus, which is
 ’ • r*
( l(f) l) . PHYSICAL ASPECTS ( g j

^ g ^ / m i l e s , while the Ganges is 1550 miles, h?

length.
The western portions of the Indian Empire
comprise the great deserts ot Baluchistan, Sind,
and Rajputana. From the valley of the Ganges
to the south the country slopes upwards to Central
India, where at an elevation of 2000 ieet the climate
is cool and pleasant in winter, and bearable in the
hot weather. The same may be said of the Central
Provinces, with their sacred river the Narbada.
Further south again, the Deccan plateau with its
wide and stony wolds is more extensive than the
low-lying land on either side of it, which is again
the hot traditional India.
The Western Ghauts rise to an altitude of
8000 feet in the Nilgiris, which enjoy sub-tropical
vegetation, an abundant rainfall, and an altogether
admirable climate, nor are the Aneimalei Hills
much inferior in height, beauty, and climate to the
Nilgiris.
The forests vary widely in character, from the
huge trees and impenetrable vegetation of the sub-
Himalayan Terai, comparatively sparse and stunted
trees of the central highlands, and the dense ovet-
grown jungles of the west coast, which are impass­
able, except along the tracks made by the only
engineers of these wild woods, the elephants.
The flora of India is as varied as its climate,
which changes from torrid to arctic, and irom the
 n
(’ ( S y . 1/ MODERN INDIA o L
|"-E maximum of aridity to the extreme of humidity, It
has, therefore, vegetation of the Oriental, European,
African, Tibetan, and Siberian types, and some
idea of the variety of flora may be gathered from
the fact that India contains 17,000 species of
flowering plants and 600 species of • ferns, and
botanists divide the country into no fewer than
sixty-four provinces. Ilex and eugenias smothered
in orchids, tall flowering trees as gay as tulips,
tree ferns as high as oaks, palms as thick upon
the ground as grass, teak lofty, strong, giant­
leaved, and fit
“ To be the mast
On some great ammiral,”

forests of rhododendrons, counties carpeted with

sensitive plants, grass and reeds taller than the
tower of the village church, wide plains covered
with dreary euphorbia and camel-thorn, endless
swamps of tamarisk, such are a few of the countless
vegetable phenomena.
Most kinds of men and women are found in
In d ia; most, partly from choice, partly from neces­
sity, are practically vegetarians ; and food, housing,
and clothing are cheap to a degree impossible of
comparison with the like conditions in Europe.
British India comprises 1,097,901 and the native
States occupy 690,272 square miles, while the popu­
lation of British India is 232,072,832 and of the
native States 61,325,376. Of the provinces Bengal
 POPULATION fo r
^ M s a i 'n s upwards of 50, Eastern Bengal upwards teffcLi
30, the Central Provinces upwards of 9 millions,
Bombay 18, Burma 10, Madras 38, the Punjab 20,
and the United Provinces 47 > millions. The native
States are less populous, but Plyderabad has 1 1 , and
Mysore 5 J millions of inhabitants.
Calcutta, with a population of over a million, is
one of the largest, and Bombay one of the most
magnificent, cities in the world, and there are
thirty-one towns with over 100,000 and fifty-two
with over 50,000, inhabitants, but only 29,244,000,
or one-tenth of the total population, is urban in
character, while 191,692,000 out of 294,361,000 are
engaged directly or indirectly in agriculture.
The population has steadily increased in the
decade which elapsed between the Census of 1S81
and 1891 ; but, notwithstanding frequent expressions
of opinion to the contrary, a close examination of
the conditions discloses the fact that the continent
of India is capable of supporting a far larget num­
ber of inhabitants than that which now dwells within
its spacious limits.
Of the total population Hindus are Jo, Mahome-
dans 2 1, Buddhists 3, and Christians 1 per cent,
respectively, while the Europeans numbeied 169,6/7
at last Census.
If the death-rate, 38.4 per mille, appears high,
it must be remembered that the birth-rate is 48..',
and that Eastern populations will not be bom,
 MODERN INDIA
\ ^ M ^ : / efuse to die, so as to suit themselves to ta b L i
^^aS^erage figures of Europe.
Of males between 30 and 40 only one in
twelve, and of males between 40 and 60 only
one in twenty, is unmarried. O f females only
one-third are celibate, and of these three-quarters
are under the age of ten, while in England two-
thirds of both sexes are single. Though their
religions allow, the Mahomedan four wives, and the
Hindu a second, in cases where the first, spouse is
childless, the people of India are practically mono­
gamous, there being only i o n wives to every 1000
husbands.
Of every thousand of the population, one male in
10, and one female in 144, are literate, and of the
great provinces the order of literacy is Burma first,
Madras second, Bombay and Bengal, the old un­
divided province, third. Cochin and Travancore
occupy a higher place in respect of education than
any province in India proper.
I he registration of vital statistics in India is
but thirty years old. Fever, chiefly malarial, carries
off more victims than plague, the mortality from
which is comparatively trifling, the relative figures
being 19 to 2 per cent. Nevertheless, in conse­
quence of the inveterate ignorance of India which
prevails in Britain, agitators succeed in representing
that the population is being carried oft wholesale by
plague, which they boldly ascribe to the starvation
ff( 1 POPULATION (A j
•X ^ v S ^ tK e people by the British Government, the k J l L j
being, as stated elsewhere, that during seasons of
scarcity, for there is no more famine proper, a
system of outdoor relief is brought into force,
which provides more effectually than that of
Britain, that no one shall die of hunger, and in
fact it is practically the case that no one does.
The plague mortality in the Punjab in 1908,
excluding native States, is given in the most recent
returns as 30,708, against 608,685 in 1907, so that
this scourge is rapidly diminishing in strength.
The death-rate from plague in that province in
1908 was, in fact, no more than 1.53, while that for
smallpox was 1.42, per thousand.
O f the peoples of India nearly two-thirds are
in one sense or another engaged with agriculture,
52 per cent, being landlords or tenants, 12 per
cent, field labourers, and another 9 per cent, more
or less directly connected with the land.
About 15 per cent, are maintained by the pre­
paration and supply of material substances, and of
these more than one-third make a living by provid­
ing food and drink, four millions being occupied in
the provision of animal food, chiefly fish, a tact
which will be a rude shock to those who think that
all India is vegetarian.
Commerce accounts for no more than 2% per
cent, of the population.
T o such an extent have members of castes
 MODERN INDIA
their traditional occupations that o iu y X j
i t per cent of the Brahmins of Madras, and 22 per
cent, of the Brahmins of Bombay, follow the calling
of priest, even if that term be given a sufficiently
wide interpretation to include beggars, students,
and astrologers.
Sir Alfred Lyall, who has done more to develop
interest in India than any other writer of our day,
described it as the land

“ Where deities hover and swarm,

Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops or the
gusts of a gathering storm.”

In the Vedas, the earliest religious books of

India, the gods of sky, air, fire, and death are
worshipped. The trend of thought was pantheistic,
but the idea of one supreme being none the less
pervaded the ancient faith.
After the Vedas came the Brahmanas, while
t ,e piiests were elaborating a religious and philo­
sophic system, which was fairly well developed
oy 500 b . c ., and was reformed by the evolution of
Buddhism.
Gautama, subsequently Buddha, grew up in the
belief that the object of life should be to avoid being
born again, and that man’s actions in controlling
his passions determined the conditions of his future
birth.
When he became Buddha, the enlightened, he
 RELIGION /^b
that life is vanity, rebirth the re su lcp y j j
passions and desires, to be escaped only by right
beliefs, right resolutions, right words, acts, and
thoughts.
Buddhism prescribes a different way of salvation
from Brahmanism. A s Dr. Hopkins says, “ Know ­
ledge is wisdom to the Brahmins, purity of life to
the Buddhists.” T he latter was a negative and
pessimistic creed, the object of which was release
from the sinful conditions of mind, which would
produce rebirth.
Such as it was it coexisted with Brahmanism
for centuries, and exercised upon it a liberalising
and humane influence.
In the days of Asoka, 269-232 b .c ., it became
a state and missionary religion, and subsequently
spread to Ceylon, Burma, Siam, China, and Japan,
but decay set in from 750 a .d ., and at present there
are only 300,000 Buddhists in India proper, though
there are upwards of 9,000,000 in Burma.
T h e somewhat similar religion, Jainism, places
the sanctity of animal life in the forefront of its
tenets to such an extent as to practically over­
shadow the other articles of the creed. There are
still upwards of a million Jains in India.
O f the Hindu gods, S iv a and Vishnu are the
more important, Brahma having few worshippers.
Siva is the destroyer and rebuildcr of life ; Vishnu is
the bright and friendly god, who has visited earth
 MODERN INDIA (C T
succession of incarnations, the most popular of
which are Rama and Krishna. .
The Sikhs of the Punjab are monotheists,
prohibit idolatry, and denounce caste distinctions.
They all wear long hair, short drawers, iron
bangles, and steel quoits, and with them tobacco
is taboo.
Of modern theistic sects, the Brahmo-Samaj is
a kind of Unitarianism, which discards all idolatry,
but maintains many of the religious peculiarities
and characteristics of the Hindus. The Arya-
Samaj, differing but slightly as to creed, has,
in fact, become practically a political association,
closely connected with the unrest which is mani­
festing itself in a manner most unfriendly to the
British Government in the Punjab and in Upper
India.
Animistic beliefs form the real religion of the
masses of the people, who worship at shrines, which
are mere vermilion-streaked stones in the forest,
while trees and the natural features of the land­
scape appear as symbols of ghostly companies of
phantoms, which, dwelling in rocks, trees, and
rivers, preside over cholera, smallpox, and other
diseases.
1 urning to the Mahomedans, who first came to
India at the close of the tenth century, the kings
and emperors of this faith practised conspicuous
tolerance until the reign of Aurangzeb, whose
W W l V RELIGION CAj
V.V'^&aticisrn precipitated the break up of the M o tH n ^
^Slnpire.
Mahomedanism is a thoroughly democratic
creed, and hence the great accessions to its
numbers which have taken place in Eastern
Bengal, on the Malabar coast, and in other parts
of India.
The Parsees, important by their enterprise,
wealth, and culture, but not by their numbers,
are descendants of emigrants who left Persia when
that country adopted Mahomedanism, and they
number under 100,000, most of whom belong to
Bombay.
Christians number nearly three millions, two
and a half millions of whom are native converts,
of whom, again, two-thirds are found in Madras,
including the native States of Travancore and
Cochin. In these States, the most Hindu part of
India, Christians are incomparably more numerous
in proportion to the population than they are in
any other part of the Empire.
O f the native Christians, two-fifths are Roman
Catholics, one-ninth belong to the Anglicans, and
one - twelfth to the Baptists, while Lutherans,
Methodists, and Presbyterians together claim one-
tenth of the total sum.
There are few Jews, but two very interest­
ing white and black communities are found at
Cochin, where the former claim to have settled
 /jjS*■ f\
MODERN INDIA /^T
V .; ^ S o ir a.fter the destruction of the temple at J e J i ^ L j
^iisMefn by Titus. They live alongside, but never inter­
marry or associate with, their black co-religionists.
Their women are quite fair, and look, in their
surroundings, dazzlingly white. They maintain all
the ceremonies of Judaism intact, and keep up
a sort of connection with Jerusalem.
O f the total population of India, 294,361,000,
Hindus account for 207,147,000, and Mahomedans
for 62,458,000. The animists are classified, though
probably a large proportion of the Hindus really
come under this head, as 8,584,000; the Buddhists,
nearly all in Burma, 9,476,00c ; while Christians
are 2,923,000, Sikhs 2,195,339, Jew s 18,000, and
Parsees only 94,190, though of them, it may well be
said, ponderandi sunt non numerandi.
Among the Christians, Roman Catholics are
1,202,000, against Anglicans 453,000 and other
Protestants 587,000, while the Syrian Christians
of Malabar, most interesting people, are 570,000.
The Indian Government has in recent years
devoted great attention to increasing its knowledge
ol the languages of India, which belong to five
great families of speech— the Aryan, Dravidian,
Munda, Mon-Khmer, and Tibeto-Chinese.
ih e first family, when brought in contact with
them, tends to override or extinguish members of
the other tour families, and the Aryans, whether
they came from the steppes of Southern Russia or
(if W )!' LANGUAGES (g T
N ^ p j^ y h e re , have at a-ny rate played the g r e a t S c ^
part in the development of the country.
T he Indo - European group include the
Iranian or Persian, and the Pushto and Beluch,
the languages respectively of Afghanistan and
Beluchistan.
Sanskrit had begun to be spoken in India as
early as 300 b . c ., and survived as the sacred
second language, alongside others of the Indo-
Aryan type of more or less common origin.
O f the modern Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi
or Hindustani is spoken by upwards of 100, and
Bengali by upwards of 44, millions. The Per-
sianised form of Hindi is generally described as
- Urdu. Mahratti is the speech of upwards of 18
millions.
The Hindi form of Hindustani was practically
invented at Fort WilHtfn, was intended for the
use of Hindus, and is derived from Urdu by
eliminating words of Persian and Arabic origin
and substituting for them Sanscrit words or words
derived from Sanscrit.
Hindi is generally written in Devanagiri or
Sanscrit characters, while in Urdu the Persian
letters are employed.
In the fact that out of 4 4 ! millions who speak
Bengali, 4 4 J millions inhabit Bengal, Eastern
Bengal, and Assam, is found such justification
as exists for the agitation against the division of
W W % ( 2 t1
\J \ M i J - J MODERN INDIA
the old province of Bengal into two Lieutenant-
Governorships, whereby it is of course in no way
prejudiced, but to this extent advantaged that
two Lieutenant-Governors with their staffs are
devoted to the administration of the affairs of 80
millions of Bengalis, instead of one officer of that
rank. The laws administered and the character
of the administration and of the administrators,
and for the most part even the personnel of the
latter, are of course unchanged.
Of the Dravidian languages, Tamil spoken by
16, Kanarese by io, and Telugu by 20 millions,
are the chief varieties, but these are of course
separate, and indeed highly developed and scientific
tongues, Tamil in particular possessing consider­
able literature of high merit and originality.
Malayalam, an offshoot of Tamil, is spoken
by six millions of dwellers upon the coast of
Malabar.
The Munda languages are superlatively ag­
glutinative, and are spoken in Chota Nagpur and
the surrounding country, and in the Central Pro­
vinces. However valuable from a linguistic point
of view, it will pay no one but officers stationed
among the people, or scholars, to be at the pains
to acquire these tongues.
i he Indo-Chinese languages include Tibeto-
Chinese and Mon Ivhmer. They are usually
monosyllabic in character, and the peoples who

* i
 ETHNO LO GY
T/-speak' them came originally from North
China.
Burmese is the vernacular of upwards of seven
millions, and there are, it is calculated, in all, no
less than 145 distinct languages spoken in the
Indian Empire.
I he Sanscrit word for caste means colour, and
colour as a general rule, with many and large
exceptions, is a fair test of caste, light brown,
wheat-coloured, and bamboo people generally being
of higher caste than those of dark colour. All,
however, have black or deep brown, straight and
never fuzzy hair, and all have dark brown eyes,
such as are usually described as black. N ext to
colour, probably the nose is the greatest caste
indicator, those who have this organ broad or flat
generally belonging to the lower classes.
The chief types of the inhabitants are Indo-
Aryan, Scytho - Dravidian, Hindustani, Bengali,
Mongoloid, and Dravidian. Such do not admit of
very sharp definition, but as from time immemorial
immigrants have crossed from E ast to W est, and
from North to South, representatives of the Indo-
Aryan type have spread themselves all over India,
remaining always on the top social stratum.
Authorities are much less positive now than
when M ax Muller wrote about the Aryan race,
and no one really knows whence it came, or very
much about it. It is, however, pretty well agreed
[i( t| )§) MODERN INDIA \CT
-<^hat the Indo-Aryan type is not Indian in its J
origin, and it is surmised that it came from Persia
before that country, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
became so dry, desolate, and barren as they
now are.
Later, when tribal immigration was succeeded
by the immigration of bands of warriors, women
no longer accompanied the invaders, who subse­
quently, whatever their race, whether Greek,
Scythian, Arab, Afghan, or Mogul, became ab­
sorbed into the native population.
Thus the Indo-Aryan type, comparatively pure
in the Punjab and Rajputana, becomes mixed with
Dravidian blood in Hindustan and Behar, and
almost vanishes in the Mongol strain in Lower
Bengal, east of which Chinese influence begins to
assert itself.
The word caste originated with the Portuguese
who arrived with Vasco da Gama, and is derived
from a Latin word, castzis, signifying purity ol blood ;
as Horace says, “ Populus castus verecundusque.
A caste is a collection of families or groups
claiming common descent from one ancestor, and
following, or professing to follow, the same occu­
pation, and all over India at the present moment
tribes are being converted into castes, because of
the greater consideration attached to membership
of such guilds.
Castes are divided into tribal, occupational, and
(*(2 y eth n o lo gy
v sectarian types, as well as into castes formed
migration, and by change of customs, and castes of
the national type such as the Mahrattas, who played
such an important part in Indian history just before
our supremacy was established, and who are now
taking an exceedingly active, though not so openly
acknowledged, attitude of hostility towards our rule.
That is to say, not the Mahrattas generally, but
the leading Brahmins, who have settled in the
Mahratta country and exercise a very consider­
able influence amongst the cultivators, who are
the bulk of the race or tribe.
The classification of castes presents, as might
be expected, peculiar difficulties, and the sensible
principle was adopted in the Census of 1901 of
classification by social precedence as recognised by
native public opinion.
This system, of course, does not allow of one
classification for the whole of India, which includes
many countries in which particular castes do not
exist, or, when they do exist, possess different social
values. In all parts, however, the Brahmins head
the list, and it is their influence which inspires the
advanced reform party from which arises the un­
rest now manifested in India. Again, the tradi­
tional position of the Kshatriyas as second, and
of the Vaisyas or merchants as third in rank, is
generally maintained.
But the different classes of the Sudras are
B
if JP \ t MODERN INDIA f n j
Y v^Ss^ rem cly difficult to place, their position deperdmc^^
5
^tq on the extent to which Brahmins and mefnbers
of the upper castes will or will not take water from
their hands.
In Cochin people of certain castes are held to
pollute their high-caste brethren, if the relationship
be allowed, as it is not in India, at distances ranging
from sixty-four to twenty-four feet.
The beef-eating pariah is at the bottom of the
list of the unclean. But so minute are the grades
that precedence in some cases depends upon whether
the village barber will shave, cut toe-nails, and take
part in marriage ceremonies, or whether he will only
perform one or more of these functions.
In Burma there is no caste, nor, of course,
within the fold ot Islam, wherein in sight of God
and Mahomet all followers of God and Mahomet
are equal. Nevertheless there are grades of dis­
tinction, in proportion as the Mahomedan is near to
the Arab, Persian, Afghan, or M ogul; and amongst
the extremely numerous Mahomedans descended
from Hindu converts the influence of the original
caste is still very strong.
it is suggested by the latest writers on the
oiigin of the institution that the priestly caste
bon owed from the neighbouring country of Persia
the traditional division of mankind into four classes,
of which they tnemselves were necessarily first.
The complete admixture of the conquerors from
(fvS)?) ETH NO LO GY lfil}
^Che-kWest with the conquered races in India was
prevented by the fact that the former only took
women from, and never gave women to, the latter.
There has, however, been no little amalgamation,
and it is calculated that there are at present no less
than 2400 castes and tribes.
 ---- -s. /'
X a^e ■ G0lV \

C p (s i.

CHAPTER II
W ILD L IF E

I n d i a , the Paradise of the big game shooter, natu­

rally abounds in various species of animal life.
The fauna of the coastal regions of Malabar and
Burma differ in all respects from the denizens of
the deserts of Rajputana, Sind, and the Punjab, and
wide indeed is the range and infinite the difference
between the homes of the greater carnivora, the
bison and the elephant, and those of the ibex
and antelope. The lion, which hardly pretends in
India to be the king of animals, is now almost
extinct, though a few remain in Kathiawar, but
tigers are still fairly plentiful, though they have
greatly diminished in numbers owing to the action
of the British Government in granting indiscrimi­
nate rewards for their destruction.
Amongst tigers, man-eaters are rare and con­
spicuous exceptions, the present mortality on this
score being three or four men in a million. The
diet of the ordinary tiger consists chiefly of those
animals deer, antelope, and wild pig— which prey
upon and destroy the crops of the cultivators,
20
 W ILD L IF E

about 70 per cent, of the population,

N & iT 'th e ir benefactors are the benefactors of the
greatest number of the inhabitants. Nor is the tiger
really in any respect the enemy of man, whom, on
the contrary, he shuns with extraordinary solicitude.
The native shikari, or game-killer, who lives upon
the Government rewards, naturally prefers to kill
the useful and comparatively common deer-stalker
before the rare and dangerous man-eater, and thus
it is that the Indian administration connives at,
and encourages, the destruction of one of its most
useful auxiliaries.
It is the easiest thing in the world to fill an old
gun with slugs and miscellaneous contents, and to
sit up in a safe place in a tree, over one of the few
ponds at which the greater carnivora come from
long distances to drink during the hot weather.
The perpetrator of this simple feat receives for
each skin produced at the local authority’s office
thirty rupees, or £2, upon which he can live for a
year, It is not suggested, of course, that rewards
should not be given for man-eaters, who are easily
distinguishable from their harmless brethren. This
may seem a strange statem ent; but every tiger is a
personage and well known to the local villagers, and
the man-eater, who is as rare among tigers as the
murderer among men, is far more easily tracked by
the villagers affected by his depredations than an
assassin is by the police in Europe.
If ® 2 j ! MODERN INDIA
n
\O T
I
course the cattle-lifter costs something tor
Tiis keep. Nevertheless, he earns it many times
over in what he saves the villagers.
There are districts, no doubt, in which tigers
develop especially malevolent dispositions, and in
the Sunderbunds they cannot be trusted.
Many authorities, including Mr. Lydekkar and
Mr. Reginald Gilbert, have expressed opinions
similar to those here enunciated, and the writer has
several times brought the matter before the India
Office, and also the House of Commons, which, how­
ever, of all audiences, is most difficult to convince that
stock and conventional ideas about India are in fact,
as such ideas almost always are, utterly erroneous.
The natives of India habitually class or confound
tigers with leopards and panthers, which are less
notorious and more numerous; and there are, of
course, other varieties of the cat family, from the
great tiger down to the harmless and necessary
domestic specimen. Amongst other carnivora are
the hyena, a ghoulish resurrectionist and eater of
carrion, wolves, and dogs of different kinds, includ­
ing wild dogs, exceptionally intelligent creatures,
which exhibit extraordinary powers of organisation
for the pursuit of game, and from a pack of which
hardly any animal can escape. Then there are the
golden dog, the jackal (cants aureus), useful as a
scavenger, but as a serenader the most unpopular
of his class, foxes of different kinds, otters, often
(*( 8 y WILD L IF E f c j
and used as auxiliaries by fishermen, arm
tears, which sometimes inspire terror, but oftener
laughter.
In spite of their scientific classification, bears
prefer fruit and sweets, and never touch butcher’s
meat, though fond of a dish of white ants as a
savoury. Needless to say, they love honey, and
seem able to defy the bees with the same impunity
as the hill-man, who will plunge his arm deep into
the hole in the tree containing the comb.
Amongst mammals the monkeys are perhaps
the most numerous, from the hoolook, a charming
immigrant, who will take a man’s hand in confiding
fashion if startled by a dog or other enemy, to
the common bandar (macacus), or monkey folk of
Kipling’s tales, which almost any sportsman could
supplement with stories of his own experience.
They are chiefly vegetarian, but like cows are not
particular what they eat, and refuse very little that
comes their way. They are full of intelligence,
mimicry, and humour, and will repay observation.
Most jungle lovers find them very amusing company.
Not only are they very human in their habits, but
they occupy a most distinguished place in Indian
mythology in consequence of the high position and
reputation of the monkey chief Hanuman, who
aided Rama in his expedition to Ceylon for the
recovery of his ravished wife from Ravana, which
epic can be read with great pleasure and profit
( \8 / MODERN INDIA (O T
done into admirable English by Miss FrederiKa
Macdonald.
In the forests of Assam, Malabar, and elsewhere,
the lordly elephant, undisputed king of the jungle,
still reigns supreme ; but though possessed of giant
strength he never uses it unless attacked, or unless
he finds some foreign or unfriendly substance like
mankind twixt the wind and his nobility, when, unlike
other wild animals, he is very likely to charge down
upon the intruder, -who in dense jungle has very
little chance of escape. Were it not that the sight
of elephants is most defective it would be almost
impossible to stalk them, and in the long reeds and
grass, in which they live, a man is as helpless and as
incapable of movement as a fly in a spider’s web.
As it is, there is no sport so dangerous as stalking
elephants, for the biggest of beasts is almost invisible
in his brown, not black, coat, which melts imper­
ceptibly into the surrounding dried grass, neutral
rock, and yellow herbage. It is only in captivity
that the elephant is as black as brush and oil bottle
can make him.
Indeed it is quite easy for the stalker to stumble
on to tiie beast’s hindquarters in picking his way
through the forest, and unless he is tearing down
branches to eat, bubbling, bathing, or bolting, no
creature can be more silent than the earth-shaker.
Moreover, the elephant cannot be killed except at
very close quarters; the ear-hole, where the bone
(|7 ^ Jr WILD LIFE f e j
Kv is tliin, is extremely small, and it is quite possibtfer-^
to fill with lead the great dome of bone at the top
of his head without doing more than giving him a
headache and making him with very good reason,
poor beast, exceedingly angry.
To segregate a warrantable bull from the herd
is also very difficult, and while the former is the
objective of the hunter, he himself is often the objec­
tive of a suspicious covr, -who scents danger to her
offspring, and will hunt him down all day. The tall
forest trees, frequently running up to a great height
before they throw out any branches, are not negoti­
able, a small tree is not secure, and the writer of
these pages has been charged in such an one by
an infuriated cow, and knocked out of it on to the
ground. The spectacle of a herd of elephants living
in dense forests, in whose dark recesses they avoid
the heat of the sun, in which they travel by paths
made by themselves as they move, in which they
enjoy their favourite food, with a swamp on one
side for a bath, and a grassy hill on the other for
pasture, gives extraordinary pleasure and is one
of the most idyllic possible. It produces in the
intruder a feeling that it is positively w'icked to
penetrate, with murderous intent, the deep in­
terior of the wood, or to sit treacherously near the
swamp, or on the hillside, in order to destroy the
harmless leviathan, who asks nothing but to be
let alone.

16034
 MODERN INDIA □ iL
n a herd, when undisturbed, the cows keep
together with their calves at heel, the little ones
imitating their mothers’ actions by filling their trunks
with water and spouting fountains over their backs,
by wallowing in the mud, or playing pull devil pull
baker with their trunks. It is, however, only the
calves who behave in this way, for adult, middle-aged,
and old elephants are conspicuous for their grave
and dignified demeanour. Few sportsmen care to
kill many of this distinguished species, or can con­
template without mixed feelings the ivory tusks
torn from the venerable head.
Lying prostrate on the grass, the big beast
recalls the line of Homer—
kcito fxeyas /ueyaXwcrri

Once slain he enjoys the same sepulchre as the

Parsee, and legions of vultures feed upon his vast
carcase, which none the less takes a Ion?*- O time
before it is resolved into its primal elements. The
elephant who is permitted to die a natural death is
dignified and considerate to the end, and no one
can discover the inaccessible spot he chooses for
his final dissolution.
The rhinoceros is found in Assam and the
Nepal f erai, the tapir in Burma, and the wild
buffalo continues to exist in Bengal, Assam,
and the wild country on the outskirts of the
Central Provinces, but to find it spells fever.
 WILD LIFE ^ j
X ^ ^ ^ j e a d s are identical with those of the domes&M -^
species, and finer specimens can nowhere be found
than among the herds of the pastoral Todas of the
Nilgiris.
These singular people, a veritable race enigma,
are but 800 in number, and their lives are largely
devoted to the care of their buffaloes, which it is
hardly too much to say they worship. 1 he dairy
is a temple, the milk an offering, and the slaughter
of buffaloes the chief characteristic of a great funeral,
which, as in the case of the burial of a Mahomedan
at the shrine of the holy Imams, may be postponed
till long after the actual decease. The extent to
which the cult of the buffalo enters into their lives
may be judged from one of their prayers, which
runs as follows :—
“ May it be well, may my buffaloes have calves,
may I have children, may my calves have milk and
may they not be kicked away by their mothers.
May I and my buffaloes be free from disease, may
no outsiders come to disturb me. ’
Similar instances of animal worship may of
course be instanced on all sides, and it ;s not too
much to say that the cow is adored from onk end to
another of India.
T he rhinoceros must not be confounded with
the hippopotamus, or river horse, for the former is
not an amphibious animal, though he chiefly haunts
the neighbourhood of rivers and swamps. H e is a
 ^ 28)V, MODERN INDIA (fiT
'v- .slow and stupid creature, but uncertain of temper,
and sufficiently dangerous when roused. Like the
elephant, next after which he is the largest mammal,
he has wretched sight, and like him he depends,
even more than other animals, on his sense of smell.
Cases are reported, but not very well authenticated,
of a rhinoceros having vanquished an elephant in a
pitched battle ; but, beast for beast, the latter is the
master of the pair.
The bison (bos gaums) is in many respects the
most magnificent animal found in India. Good
specimens stand sometimes nineteen hands in height,
and their horns run to a length of three feet, and are
from eighteen to twenty inches round the base.
Notwithstanding their bulky and massive bodies,
their feet and legs are almost as delicate and beau­
tiful as those of a deer.
Like the tiger, the bison is the subject of
unceasing warfare, and unless the Government
takes steps to preserve this magnificent animal, it
will in no long time become extinct.
The ibex and the wild goat offer the best of
sport, but the latter is of course a wholly different
animal from the true ibex.
There are no less than 1617 species of birds in
India, and many of them are a great feature of life
in the forests, where their gorgeous plumage glitters
under quivering shafts of sunlight, while the less
brilliant creatures, like sparrows, crows, and kites,
(if % WILD LIFE fjfr
\h constant evidence in the towns and villagg& Lj
Crows are extraordinarily bold, and will carry toast
off the table at which a human being is breakfasting
if his attention be for a moment diverted. It is
evidently for his impudence that the common crow
was given the epithet of splendens, to which he is
legally entitled.
Green parrots flash from tree to tree in the
woods, pigeons and doves coo in the tree-tops,
and sand-grouse, pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, partridge,
plover, snipe, quail, and here and there in the hill
country, woodcock, in different parts of the con­
tinent offer good shooting. It is, however, dangerous
to shoot pea-fowl or pigeon in the neighbourhood
of temples, of which they often are held to be
sacred appanages.
Gulls and tern swarm on the sea-shore and in
the back-waters, pelicans and cormorants are found
inland, and storm petrels on waters which are subject
to terrific cyclones.
T he ibis, though less sacred, is as common in
India as in Egypt, and amongst the specimens of the
heron family are white egrets and pond herons or
paddy-birds, which like many others are persecuted
for their plumage.
The imperial eagle of India is less warlike
than is usually supposed, and never defends its
nest from a robber. Indeed, smaller members
of the feathered tribe have much stouter hearts,
/y/^SSx
(i f * o ] jl MODERN INDIA Iq j
'w>^^t3wever much men, whose feet are chained
~Xne earth, may admire the noble bird,

“ With its pride and ample pinion,

Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deeps of air.”

The keenness of vision, however, of the eagle and

vulture cannot be exaggerated, and every sports­
man knows how quickly the carcase of a deer, even
when drawn under cover immediately after it is
killed in the open, becomes the prey of a flock of
vultures, of whom not one could previously be seen
by the human eye in the cloudless expanse of sky
commanded from heights of many thousand feet
above the level of the sea.
The eagle, of course, is not a can ion feeder, and
holds, like the bird in the Russian fable, that a day
on which life is supported by fresh food is worth a
year in which carrion is consumed.
Vultures are bigger than eagles, and it is pretty
certain that there are no authenticated instances of
either bird having attacked a grown man.
The spectacle of a flock of vultures consuming
the carcase of a deer, hissing and striking at one
another with their beaks, and gorging themselves
with the bleeding flesh, is gruesome in the extreme,
and one not readily forgotten. Eagles, however,
are not found gathered together where the carcase
is, and, so far as is known to the writer of these
Z?
1H S )h WILD LIFE j£ T
T lines, are never seen in flocks, though he has often
come across them in the high Indian hills and heard
their slight if “ stormy scream as they sweep by.”
The Government of Lord Curzon prohibited the
export of feathers from India, and efforts are made
to prohibit the import of feathers into this country.,
the result of which will merely be to transfer the
trade from Britain to France and other Continental
countries.
The proper remedy is to have a close season for
plumage and game-birds in India and other British
possessions, though no doubt the adoption of this
remedy is beset with certain difficulties, into which
it is unnecessary here to enter.
Teal and water-fowl of various kinds and duck
and geese are common, but swans, white as well as
black, are rather rare.
The reptiles of India are far more destructive
than the wild beasts, snakes alone killing more
people than all the wild beasts put together.
They include the python, sluggish, and to
human beings practically harmless, the deadly
cobra and the hamadryad, or king of cobras, a
truly awe-inspiring reptile, running to upwards
of twelve feet in length, which, however, chiefly
attacks and consumes its own kind, the poisonous
krait, and the Russell's viper, exceedingly dangerous
because it is loath to move out of the way of an
approaching wayfarer, and is apparently quite deaf.
W fc a js : MODERN INDIA V fiT
1 . ^ / / C r o c o d i l e s are common and fully deserve
Spencer’s epithets of cruel and crafty, though
liberties may be taken with them at the ex­
perimenter’s risk. So like the sand are they that
it is easy to walk unconsciously right up to them
as they sun themselves on sandy banks or “ in
the covert of the reed and fens.’’ They are as
silent as they are cruel and crafty, and no one
would think who saw their eyes and nose just
visible above the stream, that they are capable of
pulling into the water and killing so bulky a
beast as a rhinoceros. The crocodile’s teeth are,
indeed, in the words of Job, “ terrible roundabout,”
but though “ his scales are his pride, and one is
so near to another that no air can come between
them,” an express bullet will find a ready entry,
though the probability is that the reptile will be
able to slip into the adjacent water. His heart is
as hard as a piece of the nether millstone, and
many a man while bathing he carries off, and
many wives and maidens with their pitchers at
the river fall victims to his crafty and silent
tactics.
Turtles and tortoises offer soup and shells, the
lizard tribe flourish, and are a harmless and a useful
fly-eating race. Nor are there wanting myriads of
frogs and toads, legions of newts, and at least one
kind of salamander.
The Indian seas contain enough fish to feed
 WILD L IF E
tlie inhabitants of the land, the larger nutnpgl j
: of which are in no way debarred by caste scruples
from this diet. Indeed, the lower classes have no
objection to animal food whenever it offers at
sufficiently low prices, and provided, except in
the case of the most degraded, it is not beef.
Sharks are numerous and fierce. Saw-fish, pike,
and sword-fish, sea-horses, hedgehogs, stingrays,
devil-fish, eels, cat-fish, different carps, mahseer,
the Indian salmon running to 60 and 80 lbs., the
hilsa of Bengal, an estimable fish which furnishes
the breakfast tables of Calcutta, perch, mullet,
bream, mackerel, tunny-fish, and the excellent
seer, are amongst the better known species found
in fresh and salt water.
Efforts are being made at present to systemati­
cally work steam trawlers, the fish caught by
which would be cured and dispersed all over the
country, but they have not yet been crowned with
success.
Many books might be written about the insects
of India, commonly called Puchi Gichi, the Indian
equivalent of bugs and beetles, the protective form
and colouring of many of which are of surpassing
interest. It is indeed impossible to distinguish
certain butterflies and other insects from their
surroundings, even though they are watched, when
alighting on the substance, the appearance of

c
which they so closely imitate.
I f&4l)i j
(*( J MODERN INDIA
cv
\V |
, ... C 'T he relations between flowers and insects
again make up another fascinating aspect of
jungle life. Certain insects, for instance, would
die had they not figs, in which to deposit their
eggs and spend their lives, and there are other
fruits no less popular than figs.
Certain flowers would fade away and wither
without the particular insect, whose intervention
in each case is absolutely necessary to insure the
production of seeds in sufficient numbers to pro­
vide for the continued existence of the species they
favour.
The forests of Burma and the Malabar coast
are amongst the most luxuriant in the Indian
Empire, and those who frequent them soon learn
to regard the beast inhabitants, great and small, as
the legitimate and lawful landlords.
Love of forest life soon takes a firm hold of
those who frequent the green aisles, roofed over
with boughs, through which little shafts of sun­
light penetrate by day, and the moon throws a cool
white gleam by night.
The hill tribes have a proper awe of, and
reverence for, the home of the earth spirits,
tusked giants, silent cats, the invisible voice
folk, the spectral hunter, and other ghosts, goblins,
and demons of the forest.
Strangers must not expect hillmen to take
them right up to big game, unless they have some
 ...... " ^
!( S ): ) W ILD L IF E V V l

^^ksSai reputation, for the forest dwellers are un­

armed, they know better what the danger is, and
they can always cough by accident at the critical
moment, or lead the sportsman astray.
According to jungle lore, tigers and crocodiles
are forbidden to kill human beings, and every time
one of them slays a man it breaks one o f the
great laws imposed upon the animal world, every
member of which knows quite well what it may
and what it may not do. T h e deer may eat grass,
the tiger deer, and the crocodile fish, but no
animal may wantonly attack mankind without being
branded as an outcast. T here is an infinite store
of legend of this character, a vast field for inquiry
and observation, and the forest officer and the
sportsman may well say—

“ Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes

Panaque, Silvanum que senem, nymphasque sorores,”

and what man in such a situation has not often

repeated to himself another line from the same
“ landscape-lover, lord of lan gu age”—
“ Flumina amem sylvasque.”
f l| §L

CH APTER III

G A M E P R E S E R V A T IO N AN D F O R E S T R E S E R V A T IO N

T hroughout his service in India the writer of

these pages has been interested in the preservation
of game, and when a member of the Governor-
General’s Council, representing the Madras Govern­
ment upon that body, he endeavoured to bring
forward a measure for the protection of game and
plumage birds. The difficulties were, however, held
at that time to be insuperable, chiefly owing to the
fact that such an enactment would deprive certain
tribes and classes of their only means of livelihood.
Efforts indeed are made to prevent the wholesale
destruction of useful and beautiful feathered creatures
by prohibiting the sale of game birds as food in can­
tonments and municipal towns, where some such
steps can by law be taken, but these measures are
no more effectual than the protection afforded to
wild birds in England in so far as it depends on
the action of County Councils.
Until a close season is provided by law for
game and plumage birds, little can be done to
remedy an admitted evil.
36
 GAME p r e s e r v a t io n
W \ j|!|y ft is by no means certain that the administrat^l l J
' prohioition of the export of feathers from India,
which dates from Lord Curzon’s day, will be main­
tained, nor is it satisfactorily established that such a
measure is fair to those who are engaged in what is
after ail a legitimate trade, and might be carried on
without objection, if the birds with which it is
concerned enjoyed a close time, such as birds of
game enjoy in this country.
In the native States of Travancore and Cochin,
in which the writer had the honour to be British
Resident, elephants are wisely and efficiently pro­
tected, as indeed they are in British India, but
protection is needed everywhere for the bison, the
wild goat, and indeed for game of every descrip­
tion, as well as for the tigers, which are being
rapidly exterminated in some parts of the country,
to the detriment of the agriculturists, to whom
they are such good friends, as well as to the dis­
credit of the Government, which puts a premium
upon the destruction of useful allies.
Formerly any one who pleased, without any
kind of permission or acknowledgment, shot in the
forests of the native States, and in any forests in
British India, though reserved forests are now
closed to shooting, as well as to all unregulated
entry.
in Kashmir an efficient game preservation
department was first formed, and there licences
/ fc g ^ \ V \
f j w 3 g)| MODERN INDIA ^Q T
'^A-'Tiav'e to be taken out, and regulations for sportsnVefm^
~~ are annually published.
Some localities are strictly preserved for the
use of the Maharajah, others as sanctuaries, and
the number of head of each kind of game which
sportsmen may shoot is strictly limited, as is the
number of license-holders permitted to visit each
locality during the year.
The officer in charge of game preservation has
under him a sufficient and efficient staff, and the
receipts for licences just about suffice to cover the
expenditure.
It was the constant effort of the author to
introduce some such organised system of preserva­
tion into certain native States, but no little diffi­
culty arises from the fact that European planters
regard the right to shoot everything as a pre­
rogative of their position, while every hillman is
a born poacher. It does appear, moreover, to be
the case that where State-reserved forests exist,
preservation of game can be far more efficiently
carried on in such areas under Forest Acts than
under game laws, which seem as difficult of en­
forcement in India as elsewhere, and are no doubt,
in parts of the continent at any rate, a novel,
and therefore an unwelcome, experiment to the
people.
In a reserved forest the. Government has com­
plete powers, and once a forest is proclaimed as
 Ga m e Pr e s e r v a t io n
K \ Jgjw ch/ it becomes impossible for sportsmen to forjfill j
U ^ affien try, and uninvited shoot and make use of the
bungalows provided by the State for their own
servants or for such persons as are given permission
to use them. It is, however, somewhat difficult to
declare a tract reserved forest solely in order to
enforce game laws, and the need for the latter laws
exists notwithstanding the powers possessed by
Governments of British India and of native States
under their forest legislation. Nevertheless a good
deal of effective preservation and regulated shoot-
,ng is now carried on in Government reserves.
In Upper India shooting and pig-sticking are
strictly preserved by the ruling chiefs, and an invita­
tion or permission to indulge in such sport is highly
valued. No one would there think of trespassing
upon preserves, an act which the public opinion
of all classes would condemn. In Southern India,
however, the rights of the ruling chiefs in this
behalf have been much less carefully safeguarded,
and it is by no means uncommon for travellers
to enjoy good sport in a forest within the limits
of Cochin or Travancore, without themselves being
aware that they owe it to the hospitality of the
enlightened princes who rule over these beautiful
States.
Game preservation is by no means needed
ln the interests of the sportsman alone, or in
deference to the undoubted rights of the power,
*( f S o j 1 MODERN INDIA V fiT
N TyS& yy # t i j l j
I' whether British or native, in which resides the
sovereign right to the forests and waste lands.
The cultivators who dwell within or around tracts
in which big game abounds, benefit by wise and
temperate protection of animals, whose flesh they
rarely consume, and are no way dependent upon,
but in pursuit of which rich men visit their districts,
spending money right and left in a manner to them
as unprecedented as it is grateful. It is, however,
incumbent upon sportsmen to see that payment
is actually made to the proper recipients, and that
funds disbursed for this purpose are not appro­
priated by some middleman. The army of coolies
who follow every camp are sufficiently sophisti­
cated to see that they get paid, but the genuine
hillmen are credulous, timid, and easily defrauded
of their dues. Elephants are troublesome and de­
structive, but the cultivators can exercise the right
of self-defence, or call in a sportsman to help ; bison
do no harm to life or property ; deer and pig can
be kept down with the help of the friendly tiger.
Misunderstanding and misconception are rife
in regard to the habits, customs, and lethal quali­
ties of the wild animals and reptiles in India.
The fact that upwards of 20,000 persons are re­
ported to die annually of snake-bite is really a
testimony to the great moderation of the snakes,
which abound in a country in which hundreds
of millions walk about barefooted in the dark.
( t fW m GAM
EPKESERVATI0N C m
\ V Igghmiatophiclia swarm in the thickets of bambw^—^
v<:!aha croton, in the bushes which abut on to the
back-gardens of village huts, in the back-gardens
themselves, under the thatched roofs, and in holes,
cracks, and crevices in the ground. In some
localities cobras are encouraged to live around the
houses, and are fed with m ilk; and where tree and
serpent worship still lingers, a good snake-garden,
with the accompanying idol, is regarded as an
attractive feature of a detached residence. In and
round such huts and houses, gardens, compounds,
and enclosures, men, women, and children walk
barefooted, and never, unless it is actually cornered,
frightened beyond measure, or really hurt, does the
snake turn to bite. Such members of the tribe as
are dull of hearing, and are for that reason more
frequently trodden on or disturbed, naturally assert
the privilege of self-preservation, but all who can,
got out of the way of human beings. Mistakes
must sometimes happen in the dark, as the occu­
pants of the houses lie stretched on the floor, or
m the verandah, or recline on low bedsteads, whence
the limbs depend to the floor.
d he Government of India offered rewards for
the destruction of poisonous snakes, with the result
that snake-charmers and others bred them in large
numbers, so that the authorities practically gave
a bounty for the encouragement of a new in­
dustry, which, however great their anxiety to
((( J g A j , MODERN INDIA \CT
' |5t^;Lfang about a diversity of occupations, they had
no desire to see established.
For the European, booted and noisy of tread,
snakes have no terrors, and a sportsman may spend
his life in India and never meet any more deadly
specimen than the fresh-water snake which wriggles
harmlessly out of his way as he splashes through
the shallows in the rice-fields in search of snipe,
and disgorges the half-swallowed frog in its haste
to avoid the intruder.
Nor, indeed, are nearly all the deaths attri­
buted to snake-bite due to that cause, but to
domestic tragedies, quarrels, and riots, resulting
in an inconvenient corpse, which has in some way
or other to be explained away to the satisfaction
of an intrusive official.
The hillmen provide a most interesting study
for the anthropologist and sportsman. In spite
of, or perhaps because of, their simplicity, their
expressions are often most interesting and 01 iginal.
One such, a head-man, announced the birth of a
son, destined to become a little axeman and forest
clearer, thus: “ Last night the leaves of the forest
trembled, and the trees cried, ‘ Now in the near
future, thousands of us must bow our heads.
Some carry on a wasteful hill cultivation, cut­
ting down the forest, cultivating for a year or two,
forsaking their clearings, and repeating annually
the same destructive tactics. Others descend
(iC m W FOREST RESERVATION
\v > ^ e ip ic e s, armed with torches, to smoke out th e /l^ i
''^ e e s and purloin their honey. A rope is sus­
pended over the giddy crest, and it does not
speak highly for the tribal conception of fraternal
love, that no brother is allowed to hold the rope, for
the survivor of a family would inherit the posses­
sions, including the wife, of the deceased.
T he children of the jungle are by no means
so unsophisticated as they appear, and when a
question of boundaries arises they have a very
fair idea of the value of their evidence regarding
hitherto unvalued peaks situated in the primeval
forests. The sportsman is absolutely dependent
on their guidance, and but for their help might
spend the night in the forest eaten by leeches,
perhaps within calling distance of his camp.
There is about them a charming simplicity,
and though fond of spirits, they will, when in
company, decline a second glass, on the ground
that it makes them drunk. They are similarly
conscientious about cigars, and when a crowd of
beaters are given one apiece, if by accident a
second is offered to an individual who has already
received his share, he will unroll the first given
from his cloth rather than take another on false
pretences.
Elephants are, as has been already stated, pro­
tected, and only when proclaimed and proscribed
as criminals by Government may they be killed.
(I( f g 44J M O DERN IN D IA (O T

a matter of fact they are very mischievous

creatures, and destroy crops and even dwellings
of the peasants wholesale whenever they leave,
as they often do, the recesses of the forest and
march to the margin of cultivation. Nothing by
law provided prevents the villagers from proceed­
ing to actual hostilities by way of retaliation when
the big beasts are found in the act ot destroying
their property; but they are not easily caught, as
every one knows who has spent months, perhaps
in successive years, in endeavouring to find a good
bull and in segregating him from the herd.
Permission to shoot elephants is never given in
British India, and rarely in native States, though
the British Resident is a privileged individual, and
can generally arrange to be the executioner of a
proclaimed rogue— that is to say, an elephant con­
demned for having committed murder, or having
caused great damage to property.
Considerable risks are generally run in stalking
such intelligent creatures as elephants, and it may­
be the fate of a sportsman, as it has been of the
writer, to be followed all day, and finally to narrowly
escape with his life.
Bison never do any one any harm, and are far
too shy to approach cultivation. They are therefore
specially worthy of protection.
The policy of offering rewards for the killing
of wild beasts may easily be carried so far as to
Uf ♦ Xv FOREST RESERVATION
^ ^ ^ ^ r t e r e with the balance of Nature, and ju s t ^ a s ^
owls and other birds, which are on the whole far
more beneficial than harmful to game preservation,
are often ruthlessly exterminated by gamekeepers in
Britain, so there is great danger lest beasts which
serve a useful purpose in Nature’s scheme should
be altogether destroyed in India to the detriment
of the agriculturist, and to the infinite lessening
of the amenities of that most delightful of all lives,
a life spent in the jungle, as a friend and not a
foe to its interesting inhabitants.
O f course life in the forest is not all ioy.
There is, for instance, a large and particularly
venomous hornet which attacks the passer-by with
the ferocity generally, but, as has been shown
above, unjustly, attributed to the tiger. A bite
from one of these pests will cause the sufferer
all the pains of earache, faceache, toothache, head­
ache, and neuralgia combined.
Another terror of the jungle is a harmless-
looking plant, under every leaf of which are
millions of filaments of a kind of thistledown,
the sting of which is extremely poisonous, and
the presence of which in the throat is intensely
disagreeable.
It is not at all improbable that something
more might be done to restrain destruction of
wild beasts, by imposing an export duty on sk in s;
hut what is really wanted is protection for the
 MODERN INDIA vfiT
'■!: .particular beast in itself as a member o f an indi­
vidual species. T h e bison, for instance, should
be saved, because o f its beauty, rarity, and harm­
lessness, and also because it is kin to the__in
India— sacred cow. T h e so-called ibex, really
South Indian goat, was protected in this manner
on the iiilg iris, and there seems no particular reason
why such gam e preservation as is there prac­
tised should not be extended over other sparsely
populated portions o f the continent in which
gam e is found. T h e bison is, to use the language
o f the great Indian epic, the “ R am ayana,” the
“ very pearl of ruminant creatures,” and that it
should be slaughtered, as it has been, to be con­
verted into that unclean product, leather, is enough
to call down a judgm ent upon the heads o f the
guilty adm inistrators o f modern India.
If|
A A '—A V \

< § L

CH APTER IV

F O U N D A T IO N OF B R I T I S H G O V E R N M E N T

I n Fort St. George, founded in 1639, the traveller

may see, perhaps better than anywhere else in
India, under what conditions our forefathers lived
in the seventeenth century. d he old fortress
remains much as it was when French and English
fought for it, and the Madrassees do not forget its
historic precedence.
It was not till sixty years after its foundation
that the bigot Aurangzeb, in whose hands the
Mogul Empire was already crumbling, gave a site
on the Hoogly to the traders of Bengal, who main­
tained their position, without an army, because of
Britain’s might at sea. And Britain now holds
India by virtue of her fleet, without wdiich it would
be impossible to maintain the white army in the
country ; and it was by sea that all Europeans came
to India, just as all Mahomedan invaders came by
land.
The Portuguese tried to discover a direct route
° ver the water, whereby they could avoid the
transit duties levied by the Sultan for the passage
47
 v V 4f p MODERN INDIA (A j
r- ' '' ' the Red Sea and Egypt, and VascfeJere^
Gama had doubled the Cape and anchored at
Calicut two hundred years before Europeans
settled in Calcutta.
The Portuguese power, however, fell to pieces,
while the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns were
united, and the Dutch destroyed the monopoly of
Portugal, though their own objective was Amboyna
and Batavia. The Danes had two insignificant
settlements, eventually sold to England in 1845,
and the French became, in the middle of the eigh­
teenth century, our only serious competitors. In
the middle of the eighteenth century they took
Madras, which, however, was restored to Britain by
the Peace of A ix la Chapelle, 1748, and then ensued
the real fight for India between Dupleix and, on
our side, Stringer Lawrence and Clive. The fame
of the former commander, though he is buried in
»\ estminster Abbey, has been obscured by another
of the many inaccuracies of Macaulay, who alto­
gether ignores the senior officer. True, Clive’s
br.lliant defence of Arcot took place during Law ­
rence s absence in England, but the latter returned
to India in March 1752, and held the chief com­
mand till the recall of Dupleix in 1754. True,
U ive was present at Trichinopoly when Law
surrendered to Lawrence in June 1752, but almost
immediately afterwards he was invalided to Madras,
anr e t or ’ ngland in November, not returning
I f f lb l^ D A T I O N OF BRITISH GOVERNMENT ( g T
October 1755, after an absence of three
years.
It was during these three years that Trichino-
poly was invested by the French, when so much
fighting took place under Lawrence ; but Macaulay
ignores all this and gives the credit of everything
to Clive, who as a fact was not present at Bahoor
or at any subsequent contests with the French in
Southern India.
I he glory of Lord Clive is so great that it is in
no way impaired by rendering due homage to the
merits and services of his commanding officer,
which Clive himself would have been the very
first to render.
Coote, too, the conqueror of Lally, who was
regarded by his own sepoys as almost a demi-god,
should not be forgotten ; but it was, none the less,
Clive who, just a hundred years before the Mutiny,
at the battle of Plassey, had brought Bengal under
the English yoke. H e also, by restoring Oudh to
the Mogul’s lieutenant, and virtually independent,
Vizier, obtained in return the fiscal administration
of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, wherein the system
of dual management obtained from that time till
Warren Hastings abandoned it, and sold to the
Nawab of Oudh the kingdom, which Clive had only
nominally, and through the Vizier, restored to the
Great Mogul. I his transaction was perfectly
legitimate, because in the interval the Mahrattas
D
/jfY MODERN INDIA (g T
seized the Mogul Emperor’s person, SnllH
H astin gs properly held that, though the British
might acknowledge the representative of the
dynasty, it could not properly recognise the robber
Mahratta chief who had made himself Mayor of
the Palace.
1 hen ensued a period of confusion and anarchy,
during which the Mahratta power was divided
between its chiefs, the Peshwa at Poona, the
Bonsla Rajah at Nagpur, Sindhia at Gwalior,
Ilolkar Indore,
at and the Gaekwar at Baroda.
These, or at any given time one of these, held the
Great Mogul as a pawn and a puppet till, in the
second Mahratta vVar, the British broke their power
and established themselves as protectors of the
Emperor’s person, and of the Empire.
1 he third Mahratta W ar brought about the
defeat of Holkar and the fourth laid low the Peshwa,
who was deposed and pensioned at Bithoor, where
he left an adopted son, who subsequently became
infamous under the designation of Nana Sahib, a
name with which the seditious malcontents of India
have lately learnt to conjure. T he time was now
past for the Mahrattas to compete with the English,
and in 178c) and 1790, while we were waging war
with llyd ei Ali and his sop Tippoo, they and the
Nizam co-operated with the British, and compelled
the latter prince to cede half his dominions, which
the allies divided amongst themselves.
 ' Go%\
///«8pSEDATION OF BRITISH G O V E R N M E N T A L
\ ^ ^ y j w ithin ten years Tippoo was crushed by U S f i L j
V ^ ^ e tle sle y , who had succeeded Cornwallis and Shore,
and Lord Hastings had in turn to wage a difficult, de­
sultory, and distracting warfare against the 1 indaris,
the flotsam and jetsam of dismembered India
“ Who took to the Hills of Milwa, and the free Pindari life.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the

British, their guardian angel forsaking them, deter­
mined to replace the capable and popular Ameer of
Afghanistan, Dost Mahomed, by the fugitive Shah
Shuja, but the Afghans, in bitter resentment, killed
our Envoys, Sir Alexander Burnes and Sir William
Macnaghten, and annihilated the army of occupa­
tion, a disaster which was avenged by Generals
Pollock and Sale in 1842.
Before this, in 1824 to 1826, the first Burmese
W ar had been fought by Lord Amherst, who added
Assam, Aracan, and Tenasserim to the Company’s
territory, and in 1842 was waged the first, or what
is commonly called the opium, war with China, in
consequence of which Hongkong was ceded to
Great Britain, and Shanghai was opened to British
trade. Three years afterwards Lord Hardinge
conducted the first Sikh W ar, at the conclusion
of which the country between the Sutlej and the
Ravee was annexed, an acquisition to which Lord
Dalhcusie, by the Second Sikh and Burmese W ars,
shortly added the rest of the Punjab, Oudh.^Satara,
' ' Go%x
{ i f MODERN INDIA fn j
\ ' ^^fhansi, Nagpur, and a considerable part of what^n>“ ^
■ ww the Province of Burma.
Dalhousie, great as a conqueror, was also great
as an administrator, and it was he who introduced
cheap postage, constructed roads and canals, and
inaugurated, what has developed into the educa­
tional system of the present day.
Lord Canning was constrained to make war
with Persia, took Herat, sometimes called the key of
India, and fought the second Chinese War, follow­
ing upon which the rights of trade were conceded
to England, America, and all European powers.
Then was our uninterrupted career of conquest
broken by the Mutiny, to describe which there is
neither need nor space in these pages.
As a result India was transferred to the Crown,
and Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, who already
had distinguished himself in those troublous times,
writes that the rising against us was due in large
measure to well meant but mistaken attempts to
govern, in accordance with the systems prevailing
in the United Kingdom, millions of Asiatics, as
numerous as all the peoples of Europe, and of as
many different religions.
But while these pages are being printed, the
advanced and disaffected party in India are putting
forth all the pressure, which capable intriguers can
exert, to induce the Government to proceed further
along the same path, as to taking or refusing which
(if fltw N D A T IO N OF BR IT ISH GO VERN M ENT I q j

i^W ^fe<’ootion is not now open as it was in the

Mutiny epoch.
Since the great rebellion was quelled, we have
had no further difficulty with the native troops in
India, who have proved themselves, as indeed to a
great extent they did in the Mutiny, faithful and
loyal servants of the British Crown. Afghanistan,
on the other hand, has again and again proved
itself to be a storm centre. Lord Lawrence
(1864-1868) acknowledged Slier Ali, son of Dost
Mahomed, as Ameer, and during the Viceroyalty
of Lord Lytton (18 72-18 76 ) it was discovered that
Sher Ali had received an Envoy from Russia. A s
he refused to entertain a Mission we sent to him
in 1878, war was declared, and he was defeated by
Lord Roberts, who placed his son Yakub Khan on
the throne.
Within a short time the British Resident, Sir
Louis Cavagnari, was assassinated, Yakub Khan
abdicated, and Abdul Rahman, the late Ameer,
was recognised by Lord Ripon as sole ruler of
Afghanistan.
T o Lord Ripon, whose efforts to prematurely
introduce local self-government after the British
pattern resulted in much trouble and friction, suc­
ceeded Lord Dufferin (1884-1888), whose Vice­
royalty was chiefly remarkable for the third Burmese
War, as the result of which K in g Thebaw was
defeated and deposed, and Upper Burma, the
 ■ Go%x
( i K l r l l\ MODERN INDIA f n j
acquisition, but for Chitral, was annex^Pro-^
"■ ‘ - the Empire.
To Lord Elgin, in whose Viceroyalty occurred
the most serious and widespread tribal frontier war
v. ith which we have had to deal, succeeded Lord
Curzon, of whose Viceroyalty perhaps the policy
put sued on the Western and North-Western
I rontier of India is the most prominent feature. It
is now admitted that there is little doubt that the
delimitation of the spheres of British and Afghan
■ influence under the Durand Convention led the
tribesmen to suspect that their independence was
threatened, and so contributed to the almost general
tribal rising, the operations dealing with which are
commonly known as the JTirah Campaign.
Our own responsibilities were largely in­
creased by the Durand Convention, for when once
interference with tribes beyond our own adminis­
trative frontier is recognised as a responsibility,
there is no definite limit to which such responsibility
may not extend.
i he peace and prosperity of our Empire in India
are afiected by the action of the tribes between
^ a” d Afghanistan, and also by the action of
Afghanistan, and of Persia still further to the west
Indeed our sphere of influence extends beyond
Persia itself, well into Turkish Arabia. It is true
that at tins time the Anglo-Russian Convention
had not been concluded, that admirable agreement
^ / '® t & D A T I O N OF BR IT ISH GOVERNM ENT
w v j i l ^ h / however faulty as regards our own positifttll i
5
v in^-Southern Persia, has now preserved the in­
dependence of that ancient monarchy, and has
relieved us from serious responsibility elsewhere.
The good faith of Russia has been triumphantly
proved throughout the recent Revolution in Persia,
and at the same time the wisdom of the statesmen
concerned in negotiating this invaluable instrument.
But an additional reason for congratulation may be
found in the fact that the present internal condition
of India suggests the desirability of limiting as far
as possible our expenditure beyond, and being
fully prepared to deal promptly and firmly with
trouble within, its limits.
Few acquainted with the circumstances can
doubt that Lord Curzon acted wisely in insisting
on the creation of the North-W est Frontier Province,
and he proved also a vigilant and jealous guardian
of British interests in the Arabian Sea, where France,
with whom we have now happily no difficulties,
contemplated a coaling station at Muscat, in the
Persian Gulf, where the Porte endeavoured to
extend Turkish influence over the Hadramut, and
at Koweit, which little territory will become of
great importance when the Baghdad Railway at
length reaches the Gulf.
The financial condition of India during Lord
Curzon’s term of office was highly satisfactory,
and admitted of reductions in, and remissions of,
 ..... ' " ....... ^

(f( MODERN INDIA ( fij

taxation. It is in such halcyon days that legisla­
tive experiments become possible, and Lord Curzon’s
Government passed accordingly an Act for further
regulating the immigration of coolie labour from
India proper into Assam.
Authorities differ as to the necessity for the
protection of such labour, and the coolies themselves
show their appreciation of the treatment they re­
ceive at the hands of the planters by settling
wholesale in Assam, greatly to the advantage of
that backward province. The natives of India are
by no means sheep who are easily driven in any
direction, they know quite well what is good for
them, and as the planters, to whom the country
owes so much, desire to have free labour in Assam
such as already prevails in Ceylon, and have
recently made representations to this effect, it is
sincerely to be hoped that the coolies from other
parts of India will be allowed to emigrate freely
to Assam, and not be protected to their own dis­
advantage. Of this there is always a great danger
whenever machinery exists and waits to be brought
into use.
Seasons of scarcity were not wanting in Lord
Curzon s day , and the treatment of the affected
tracts and of the distressed people was successful
in a very high degree. Indeed the Famine Preven­
tion Code is now one of the most scientific and
practical administrative instruments ever invented,
If t&FOUNDATION OF BRITISH GOVERN ME NT
during the last and exceedingly severe c^ofr^
^Imlure which occurred in the Upper Provinces during
the Viceroyalty of Lord Minto, only eleven deaths
could be directly traced to starvation, or the one-
thirtieth part of a man per million of the population
of India.
Indeed this system of outdoor relief is as perfect
in our Eastern Empire as it is imperfect in the
British Isles, where Labour members of Parliament
clamour for the same rate of payment from the
State, for the unemployed, as is given under
ordinary circumstances by private employers.
The Indian system always fixes the relief rates
at something lower than the ordinary rates of wages,
by which obvious and necessary precaution all fear
of malingering and of the creation of professional
unemployed, and all waste of the tax-payers’ money,
are effectually obviated.
It is unfortunate that the use of the word famine
still conveys the impression in England that the
people are starving, whereas the figures of those
upon relief during times of scarcity only include
persons prevented by the action of the State from
experiencing the natural result of unnaturally high
prices following upon a succession of abnormal
seasons.
Nor, while the active and persistent campaign
of malevolent misrepresentation in this and in other
respects of the British Government continues to be
 ■ g°%\
\(( ^ MODERN INDIA fn j
\v^^© W :uted, is there much prospect that the wonctaM—^
ful administrative successes of our fellow-countrymen
in India will ever obtain the recognition they deserve.
It is owing to the railways, of course, that the
Government can deal successfully with the results
of crop failure, but the above-mentioned critics
nevertheless condemn railway extension because it
is necessarily effected by means of British capital,
lent, it must be said, on extremely favourable terms
to a country which cannot raise the capital itself,
and they cry aloud for irrigation, ignoring the fact
that 22,2 a5,000 acres have been irrigated at a cost of
^32,500,000 by the British Government, and that a
Special Commission with an eminent engineer at its
head has reported that at the utmost the Govern­
ment can only irrigate between three and four
million additional acres by an outlay of eight or
nine million sterling.
It would be hopeless to ask ol critics, the
measure of whose judgment is the extent of their
malevolence, that they should remember that unless
a reasonable return can be obtained on money
invested, the expenditure of taxes collected from
all, cannot be justified upon works designed for
the benefit of the comparatively few.
It will always be remembered to the credit
of Lord Curzon s Government that the prompt
despatch of troops to South Africa saved the
situation at the outset of what proved, contrary
If JjPUNDATIGN OF BRITISH GOVERNMENT ( g T
<>.. expectation, to be a difficult, and on s e v e S ^
o cc a sio n s almost a disastrous, campaign.
Lord Minto, who has been spared external war­
fare, has had more trouble from internal unrest than
any one of his predecessors since Lord Canning.
H e has been singularly fortunate in having at the
India Office in Lord Morley a Secretary of State
who, while anxious to go as far as possible to meet
the legitimate aspirations of a class we ourselves
have created, is no less determined to deal firmly
with sedition, and has more than supported every
step taken or proposed to be taken by the Govern­
ment of India to enforce the law, preserve order,
and punish crime.
 ■ e°Sx

I© <SL
CH APTER V
ECO N O M ICS—T R A D E —T A X A T IO N —E M IG R A T IO N -
IN D U S T R IE S

It is the fate of India to be misrepresented in every

sphere, whenever she comes within the range of
British politics.
Y ear after year the Secretary of State, always a
prominent politician, and sometimes, as at present,
in the very forefront of British statesmen, himself
presents, and if not in the House of Commons, but
represented, as at the present moment, by a capable
Under-Secretary, through him presents, a satisfac­
tory account of his stewardship, and year after year
there ensues a debate exhibiting in some quarters
the most deplorably ignorant or malevolent misre­
presentation of British Indian administration. All
this is duly discounted at home, but it does its work
abroad and in India.
Treatises by Bradlaugh, Digby, Dadabhai
Naoroji, and historians of the like calibre, deal
with the so-called “ drain” to England, which the
Master of Elibank in August 1909, on the authority
of Lord Morley, stated to be ^23,900,000 a year, a
5.1m made up of .£21,200,000, the average amount
60
;/ / / ^ \ \ \
\\ S J-) ECONOMICS \flT
x ^ ^ G o v e rn m e n t, and £2,700,000 of private, re­
mittances.
This total may be compared with the £70,000,000
of these writers, and of the other hostile critics of
British Indian administration.
The Government remittance is made up of
interest on loan £9,500,000, payment for stores
which cannot be produced in India, and only such
as cannot,are obtained from this country, £2,500,000,
pension and furlough pay to civil and military officers,
£5,000,000, and miscellaneous, ,£1,250,000.
It is apparent, after deducting the amount for
pensions and furlough pay, that the bulk of this
so-called “ drain ” represents interest for railway
and other developments absolutely necessary to
India, and, hitherto at any rate, not provided for
by Indian capital.
A s regards the pretended commercial drain of
forty millions, the difference between other than
Government remittances from India and to India
is just £2,700,000, while the capital outlay on
railways alone amounts to £265,000,000, to which
no doubt another eighty or ninety millions will be
added before the stage is reached at which a halt
may be called.
These authoritative figures for the years 1904,
r9Q5, and 1906 should be sufficient to explode the
loose and inaccurate statements put forward with
the political object of proving that England is
 ■Go% x

(W § 7 ® MODERN INDIA o L
ruining India by lending her money—at extremely
favourable rates— for the execution of absolutely
necessary works.
Charges, moreover, are made against the
Government that they rackrent rural India. Sir
William Hunter is misquoted as a witness to this
effect, and from a wise and humane minute by the
late Lord Salisbury, four words only are wrested
from their context, “ India must be bled.” Lord
Salisbury’s object was to spare the agriculturist as
much as possible, and such too is evidently the
object of Lord Morley
A s to the home charges generally, without them
there could, of course, be no British Government
in India, for they include interest on loans and
allowances for Englishmen who have spent their
lives and health in the country.
The excess of exports over imports is regarded
as another sign that India is bleeding to death, not­
withstanding the fact that a similar phenomenon is
manifested in some of the most prosperous countries
of modern times, whilst in England approaching
ruin is foretold because imports exceed exports.
The United States and Argentina, wherein
exports exceed imports by 74 and 15 millions re­
spectively, are in the very van of contemporaneous
prosperity, while Persia, Turkey, and China, which
show an excess of imports over exports, are not
exactly ideal commercial States.
(ifliiXv ECONOMICS
l ^ ^ j / ^ verything which is exported from India
i course paid for in commodities of which the country-
stands in need, and capital which is imported is
obtained at about one-quarter of the lowest rates of
interest at which it would be obtainable, so far as it
would be at all obtainable, in India.
I f India ceased to export so largely she would be
obtaining less in return, and her people would pro­
portionately suffer. After all it is they who get the
goods, and all the raw products for export are pro­
duced from Indian sources and with Indian money.
I f India’s excess of grain, which exists even in
times of the most widespread failure of crops, were
not exported, there would be less money to come
in to the country for value exported, and it is
money that is needed, money to pay for grain, not
grain to be bought, of which there is always enough
and to spare. India pays no tribute to Britain, and
her prosperity now, and salvation in the future,
depend in no small measure on the development of
the industries which she owes to British initiative,
such as tea planting, in regard to which faddists
and theorists endeavour in vain to persuade the
coolies that they are underpaid and ill-treated,
It would appear that when men travel long dis­
tances for work, and having got it and served their
time, settle down in the country of their adoption,
they have not been underpaid and are not dis­
satisfied. Nevertheless there are few places in the
 MODERN INDIA |nT
where labour cannot be incited by agitaten ^4
to ask for more, and there are some countries in
which the process has reached a point at which
capital can no longer be remuneratively employed.
The critics of the Indian Government and of the
economic conditions, in the evolution of which it
has at least had a share, offer no alternative system,
except the further employment of Babus and B .A .’s,
whose salaries are to be provided by taxes drawn
from the industrious cultivator, who has no likingf
for, and no faith in, these classes which from time
immemorial have regarded him as mere material
to be squeezed. It does not even occur to writers of
tlais kind that the best hope for India lies in develop­
ing her resources, in encouraging new industries,
such as tea planting, already distributing vast sums
in comparatively high wages, cotton and jute mills,
gold and coal mining.
While the bleeding India school assert that
India is becoming less prosperous because the
prices of Indian staples have not risen, the. Congress
party cry out because wages have not advanced in
equal measure with the rise in prices, which has of
course occurred ; and while they dwell upon that
fact they conceal another, equally relevant, that
wages have risen even more than prices.
It is usual with such critics to make elaborate
and entirely fanciful comparisons of the condition
of the natives of India with that of the natives of
 Go^x
(ff'W w ECONOMICS Q t
\Vv®PTOjpean States, wholly ignoring the fact that
standard of comparison for one, should be found in
another, Oriental, and not in an European, country.
In fact, if the average Russian has an income ten
times greater than that of the average Indian peas­
ant, his board, lodging, and clothing cost him more
than ten times as much, so that relatively he is in
a less satisfactory position. Again, the fact that
Indian labour takes toll of all the by no means exces­
sive profits of British capitalists is overlooked, nor do
hostile and ill-informed critics care to remember
British legislation for the protection of tenants
from landlords and money-lenders, the extension
of irrigation, the establishment of agricultural and
co-operative credit, and the industrial eminence of
Bombay, Cawnpore, and other great Indian cities.
Nor has any one yet explained why, if land is
grievously over-assessed by the Government, rent
is so much higher than the Government assess­
ment.
It is noteworthy that writers who have furnished
ammunition for the critics of British, rule are inva­
riably men with no knowledge of rural life in India :
Mr. Bradlaugh, a professional atheistical lecturer
and politician; Mr. Digby, a journalist; Mr. Naoroji,
a Parsee, who spent his life in England, and knew
no more of India than a clerk in Londoi
It is also noteworthy that the one civil servant,
Sir William Hunter, whose writings can, even when
E
 ■e° i x

( I ( W ¥ ]I MODERN INDIA (O T
V •, perverted and misquoted, only to an extremely
limited extent, lend colour to the Congress case,
was a man talented and industrious, but one the
greater part of whose official life was spent in
England. He had, indeed, less experience of
India than almost any member of his service.
Precise definition and accuracy of statement
are not now expected of critics of British Indian
administration, and by them the land revenue is
habitually referred to as taxation, as they con­
veniently, but hardly in good faith, ignore the fact
that where land is held directly from Government
taxes include rent, so that land tax in India should
be compared with tax plus rent in this country, an
elementary consideration which reduces nine-tenths
of their diatribes to absolute nonsense.
The transparently false statement is made on all
hands that England has ruined Indian trade. Now
that is true as regards certain particular trades, but
it is also true that she has endowed India with
many new industries more than she has destroyed,
and has created her very considerable dealings with
foreign nations, for Indian trade in ante-British
days was a mere bagatelle compared to what it is
at the present time.
Nothing can exceed the unscrupulous misrepre­
sentation to which the Government of India is
exposed alike in regard to its commercial and its
land revenue policy. Its land system, which hostile
 ECONOMICS (S t
critics condemn, is no invention of
British, but was inherited from their predecessors
in title the Moguls, whose Brahmin ministers in­
vented it, and it has existed under every Govern­
ment that has ruled India, so far as we have
any record of their rule, differing in no whit in
principle, but widely in respect of its incidence,
which has been enormously and progressively re­
duced.
For the permanent settlement the British
Government is no doubt responsible, but the trans­
formation of farmers of the land tax into landlords
paying a fixed proportion of their assets to the
State, which the Bengali Babus and landlords extol,
and which they unnecessarily fear the Government
may cancel, is not a successful experiment, and at
any rate it is certain that the British Government
has had to intervene to protect the actual cultivator
from the rapacity of landlords of their own creation.
"Vet these very landlords, in no small degree, pro­
vide the funds for the agitations, which British
Members of Parliament support in the belief that
they are taking up the cause of the people of India !
I he fear that this system may be abandoned,
and that direct relations between the State and the
cultivator may be renewed in Bengal, accounts,
for the most part, for the fact that many of the
Bengal landlords subscribe to the agitation engi­
neered by Bengali Babus and Deccani Brahmins.
 M O DERN IN DIA S^\

\. \ <f|> Under the permanent settlement, the excepn ^ iJ ,

ally fertile province of Bengal, though blessed above
other parts of India with means of communication
and with a monopoly of the production of jute, does
not by any means possess an exceptionally pros­
perous peasantry. Critics of British rule devote
themselves, therefore, to the temporarily settled
districts in which the cultivator holds directly from
the State, and from which provinces very little is
collected for their war-chest. Somehow they shall
pay, is the judgment of the agitators.
In the temporarily settled districts the land­
holders pay revenue to Government, whether they
cultivate themselves or through rent-paying tenants,
and in such cases the Government of India places a
limit upon the rent they may demand. Nevertheless
these land-holders, of the classes, though natives
of India, have not been found over ready to co­
operate with the State in limiting their own powers
for the benefit of their tenants, of the masses.
W hat the State takes from the landlord as its
share, under the immemorial Indian system of
divided ownership, becomes ways and means to be
expended for the benefit of the country in general,
and there can be no object in reducing payments,
for the benefit of the landlord, to the detriment of
the tenant and the masses.
It s only another proof what children the so-
called “ friends of In d ia ” in England are, in the
(if lllf V ia economics i^ r
4
W v S ^ s of tlie Indian agitators, that the latter h Jv H -^
actually persuaded the former that the Government
of India should abandon their rights, taxes to which
they are entitled, which are levied from the land­
lords and spent on the cultivators, the inevitable
result of which would be that only the upper classes
would be spared, and the lower classes would be
further taxed to make up the deficiency. What
infinite depth of irony, of political ignorance lurks
in the fact that a Labour M.P. like Mr. K eir Hardie
condemns the Government of India for exacting
from the landlord a comparatively large share, and
for limiting by law his claim to more than a com­
paratively small share of the produce of the labours
of the agriculturist.
In the temporarily settled districts in which the
peasant proprietor pays directly to the State, of
which Madras, Bombay, and Burma are the best
examples, critics of the administration have actually
suggested that rates should be enforced which are
very much higher than those now levied.
Indeed, those who in this country are under the
spell of the subtle-minded and nimble-witted Indian
agitators little realise that their mentors are entirely
representative of the privileged classes, and that
the money with which they carry on their propa­
ganda is found by high-caste landlords and wealthy
lawyers belonging exclusively to the aristocracy of
birth, wealth, or intellect.
(§( W °Y |' MODERN INDIA In y
landlords, whose case the Labour meniS ^ 34
: unconsciously espouse, would no doubt prefer to
have their share of contribution to the expenses of
the State reduced.
The Master of Elibank lately stated in the
House of Commons that 50 per cent, is the general
standard for the ratio of land revenue to the land­
lords’ income from the land in the areas where
landlords exist, and the actual proportion more often
falls below than exceeds this standard, and the
cesses amount to not more than 4 to 6 per cent,
of the landlords’ income. In calculating the rates
of incidence of the revenue on the gross produce,
the danger of over-valuation in the matter of cron
out-turn is guarded against by excluding from the
calculation of crop yield the produce of all double
or second crops, of all non-food crops, such as sugar­
cane, cotton, &c., which are usually more valuable
than the staple food-crops, and of the very valuable
garden produce. These safeguards clearly make for
a crop valuation under rather than over the actual
yield, so that the percentage levied by the State is less
than would be inferred from the actual figures of
incidence of land revenue on gross produce gener-
ally given by the Government, viz. from 5 to 15 per
cent, in most parts of India, rising in certain wholly
exceptional cases to 20 per cent., figures it must
always be remembered including the equivalent of
English rent, as well as the equivalent of English
i ff W W ECONOMICS
Moreover, the ryotwari or peasant prb-'-*-^
prietor can throw up the whole or part of his hold­
ing whenever he pleases, and it is customary for
such an one to take up land in good, and to abandon
it in bad, seasons, so that on the average the assess­
ment actually paid to Government over vast tracts
does not exceed a penny, though the nominal tax
is seldom below fourpence, an acre.
The Famine Commission presided over by
Lord, then Sir Antony, MacDonell, no sworn
friend of the privileged classes, reported that the
Government assessment was distinctly moderate,
and did not press hardly on the resources of the
cultivator.
Few read the Mahomedan chronicles, which
in default of anything else do duty for history in
India, but such as do, must regard with wonder the
audacity of the statement that famines are more
frequent and disastrous under British rule than in
former times, when it was no uncommon thing for
more than half the population of the affected area
to be swept off the face of the earth, and when the
humane and civilised inhabitants were driven to the
expedient of eating human flesh; and when Brah­
mins were constrained by starvation to devour dogs
— from an Indian point of view, an even more
terrible proof of unfathomable misery.
The India Office, the Government of India, and
the Hakluyt Society have rescued from oblivion
' GofeX

jM f MODERN INDIA VfiT

contemporary records which throw a flood of light
on the past in India, and should be read by all
those who accept as trustworthy the fabricated
statements prepared by political agitators for public
consumption.
It is a singular circumstance, illustrating the
exigencies of agitation, that Mr. R. C. Dutt should
make the transparently inaccurate statement that
“ the soil was private property in India, as amongst
all other civilised nations,” nor will the Socialist
friends in Great Britain of the agitators in India
altogether approve of the dictum that the existence
of private property in land is the chief test of civili­
sation. Then the death-rate is said to have in­
creased in our time, the fact being that no statistics
exist with the help of which comparison can be
made before 1872, the date of the first Census,
following upon which, in 1880, the statistical depart­
ment was created in Calcutta.
Nevertheless, figures of monumental absurdity
and transparent error are so frequently repeated
that at last, from sheer weariness, they gain a
current value, and some normal and ideal death-
rate is assumed for India, far lower than that
which obtained at the same time in Western
countries.
Any stick is good enough for a certain purpose,
and the actions of self-governing colonies which,
being independent, naturally assert their right to
xjS* ■ G°%\
ECONOMICS

t^e‘r own company, is now being p re s s S f-L j

into the service of the agitators as a grievance of
great force or of great value. The question of the
emigration of coolies from India to South Africa,
the Pacific Coast, and elsewhere is not a particu­
larly serious one from an Indian point of view,
though it raises an Imperial issue of the first
magnitude, and, in spite of what agitators may say,
emigrating Indians are quite prepared to adopt the
customs of the country to which they go, if let
alone. The idea of world or of empire citizenship
has never yet materialised in the Indian mind,
the notion of social or political equality is unknown
In the country of their origin, and they attach
little value to gaining a franchise, which they have
never possessed. However that may be, foreign
countries and our own colonies will have their
way in this matter, and it is as impossible, as it
would be unbecoming, for the British Govern­
ment to attempt to impose upon others free trade
principles in respect of labour, which, in fact,
•t never does, and in this country never will,
enforce.
Under the existing system unskilled labourers
horn India have been emigrating to Natal for em­
ployment as agriculturists and as miners, till some
3 ° j Ooo h a v e been absorbed, and are working
under indentures, not only without complaint, but
to their own profit and satisfaction. There is also
 ■Go% x

P M iM fl MODERN INDIA fn j
W v S ^ ^ I a t a l a large population, which is called
° f British Indians, upwards of 50,000 in number,
not working under indentures, though many of
them are indentured labourers who have served
their time and settled in the country, or the de­
scendants of such persons. It is this latter class
which is so unpopular in Natal that the Govern­
ment of the colony has taken strong measures to
prevent an increase in their numbers. The Govern­
ment of India resented these measures and, in
retaliation, declined to facilitate the emigration of
labourers to the colony till the laws affecting the
free Indians were modified. In other South African
colonies no system of indentured Indian labour
obtains, but in all such opposition to the immigra­
tion of free Indians is manifested, and particularly
in the Transvaal, so that the Government of India
declined to establish a system of indentured emigra­
tion to that colony. 1 he Home Government, to
some extent, and probably as far as it could, sup­
ported the Indian Administration in its effort to get
better terms for free Indian subjects in South Africa ;
but the fact is that self-governing colonies will not
submit to dictation in matters vitally affecting their
own interests, that South Africa is as much entitled
to its own way in regard to this problem as is
Australia, and that any effort to force Asiatic immi­
grants upon wdiite populations must necessarily end
in defeat if not in disaster.
 ■ G° i x
e c o n o m ic s

C- V ^ B r it is h labour protects itself and obtains p j ^ L

tective legislation, and the British colonies will
protect their white labour from coloured competi­
tion, be the colour of the competitor black, brown,
or yellow.
A great danger lurks in the sentimental view
taken of this subject, and there is no proof whatever
that the peoples of India have devoted the slightest
attention to it, though certain meetings have been
arranged, and resolutions telegraphed to England,
such as can be manufactured wholesale in regard
to any issue in which any agitator takes sufficient
interest and sufficient trouble. I f natives of India
do not like the laws in force among the natives of
other countries they need not visit those countries,
and, though this may be a hardship, it is absolutely
certain that no white race will ever accept political
equality with coloured races, until the latter have
supplanted the former as the governing peoples of
the world.
It is impossible for the Government to reconcile
its own attitude in England towards labour with
condemnation of the action of the self-governing
colonies, and to the credit of the present adminis­
tration it did not attempt to interfere with the
colonial attitude in the South Africa Bill, though
copious lip - service to unsustainable ideals was
rendered in all quarters of the House of Com ­
mons.
 G°%\
t°(S y modern india ^nj
would be as easy for Members of Parliaifrem^
'-elected as free traders to justify their support of
the movement in India for rigorously boycotting all
the manufactures of their constituents, as for the
British Government, which passes special legislation
to favour trades unions in this country, to enforce
equality between white, brown, and black in Africa.
1 he true Svadeshi, or home-produce policy, is that
which the Government of India and the India Office
have long practised, and which Lord Morley has
recently extended, strengthened, and confirmed.
I here should be a great future for India, for her
textile industries, for her gold, silver, copper, brass,
iron, and wood, her pottery and tanning, dyeing and
leather-work, cane and bamboo, for carving and
embroidery, for sugar-refining, tobacco-curing, for
oil and dour mills, and for other diverse occupations.
A t present the raw material for many of these
industries is exported from India to different coun­
tries, whence it returns in the shape of manufactured
goods to the place of origin, wherein, nevertheless,
there is no lack of cheap fuel and labour.
W hy should India export oil seed and import
oil ? W hy does she grow sufficient cotton for her­
self, export most of it, and yet get back manu­
factured cotton to the tune of half of all her
imports ? Why, one of the greatest sugar producers
in the world, does she import sugar to the value of
millions sterling ?
(| 7 ^ Jr ECO N O M ICS fe jlT
K ^ ^ ^ g a i n , the Indian craftsman is a superlative^ /-^
effective workman in wood and ivory, an excellent
blacksmith, and a shoemaker who might almost
come up to the Chinese standard. There are no
better weavers in the world. T hey can mine for
diamonds and precious stones, and they can
find, in their forests, timber fit for the masts
of a great ship and for the making of a match­
box.
Skins abound alongside tanning material, dyeing
materials grow close to cotton and jute, fibres are a
drug in the market.
In textile industries India is destined to com­
pete with European and other Asiatic countries,
and it is little wonder that she looks with a jealous
eye upon factory legislation, which will limit her
output without raising wages or rendering more
happy and contented the wage-earners, who have
not complained and have little need to complain of
present conditions.
Nothing could be more odious to an Oriental
than a day plotted out in the fashion laid down by
our Factory Acts. T hey have no objection to a long-
day, provided they are not driven and can go as
they please; nor can uniform regulations be pro­
perly imposed upon a vast continent, contain­
ing every kind of climatic and other conditions,
as they can upon a little island, in the centre of
which the operative can, by no great stretch of the
 4 -/n
fff MODERN INDIA IQ T
w vS x W a g in a tio n , hear the sounding of the sea olPa^H
sides as he performs his daily duty.
Mining has fortunately experienced little inter­
ference in India; hence it is that the Mysore gold­
fields have produced upwards of thirty millions of
the precious metal, and are still pursuing a vigo­
rous and prosperous career. Here, on the pleasant
uplands of Mysore, without any special laws, and
without the help of any Government inspectors,
a model labour settlement grew up, to the ex­
ceeding benefit of the native State in which it is
situated, and, in only a slightly less degree, to the
neighbouring Presidency of Madras. The number
of persons employed in the mines consists approxi­
mately of 530 Europeans, 330 Eurasians, and
27,430 natives, who, with their families and de­
pendants, make up a total population of about
80,000, a large proportion of whom are provided
with house accommodation by the mining com­
panies, chiefly under the management of Messrs.
John Taylor & Sons, at nominal rentals. The
scale of pay is liberal, free medical treatment is
provided for all, and the employees appreciate the
conditions of service in the mines, and are contented
and happy.
At the present time operations are being con­
ducted by six British companies, whose combined
capital is £ 1,530,000, valued on the home market
at £6,000,000.
 ■ Go$ j\
e c o n o m ic s dk
conditions of an artisan’s life in India ^ 1 i
probably more pleasant than those of a mechanic in
E n glan d ; but he produces much less per head,
because the industrial system of India does not pro­
vide for that division of labour which is universal
in Europe. The Indian labouring classes are not
dependent on the rate of wages, because each man
works on his own account, and, besides supplying
the labour himself, also undertakes the risks of
production. In Europe, on the other hand, he is
generally a hired man working for an employer.
It would appear, therefore, that not only in re­
gard to land, but in regard to labour, the natives
of India, whom the Socialists describe as downtrodden
and oppressed creatures, more nearly approach their
own ideals than they do themselves, though it may
he a fault in them that they, too, are capitalists after
their own degree. Nor is it true, to expose another
fallacy, that the Indian peasant is more indebted
than his brother in Europe, for both borrow accord­
ing to their capacity and not according to their
need.
With their, to us, peculiar industrial organisa­
tion the peoples in India can, of course, never
compete with the inhabitants of countries wherein
the wage-earners work under the direction of
employers, instead of taking the risks of pro­
duction upon their own shoulders; whereas in
India every artisan is a capitalist whether or not
' ’G
o^%\
MODERN INDIA \CT
K^> f^ 4 /-h a s capital, and there is great waste for
cSr co-operation.
His wants, however, are so small, compared
with those of his brother in Europe, that his com­
paratively paltry earnings suffice for his modest
needs. Thrifty he is not, and the greater
margin which lower taxes allow him only serves
to enhance his credit and increase his indebted­
ness. Everything differs from its European
counterpart, and tranquillity and comfort, not the
acquisition of high wages, are the lodestars of
Indian life.
One thing is certain : the further development
of this vast and varied continent depends chiefly on
the continued provision of British capital, and agi­
tators are scaring British capital away, and keeping
Indian savings in the stocking or in the hole in the
ground. The Government at the present day does
good work under difficulties; but it has recently
created a Department of Commerce and Industry,
and has done something to help the tea industry and
to improve the banking system. Cable rates, also,
have been reduced, wages have increased by 50 per
cent, within a generation, and standards of living
have notably and conspicuously risen. In some re­
spects our Eastern Empire compares favourably with
our own island, for the average profit on investments
in land is admitted by the Congress journals to be
6 per cent., a rate which we would gladly see, but
\l( W )« ECONOMICS fc lT
indeed, there is little prospect that we e v C T ^
shall see, in these islands.
Cheap carriage for coal, of which there is plenty
in the Empire, is an urgent industrial need, but
India has yet to learn and appreciate the use of this
great industrial agent.
The development of the vast resources of India,
the establishment of greater industries with more
machinery, and the subsidising of cottage manufac­
tures, offer an almost illimitable field.
The railways, jute and cotton mills, tea-gardens,
gold and coal mines, employ only a million and a
half of the masses of the agriculturists, and more
of this class should, if possible, though in what
way it is hard to say, be diverted to other em­
ployments.
One thing is certain, that Government inter­
ference with labour, or with the domestic habits and
prejudices of the people, can only delay progress
and result in disaster.
Closely connected with the economic condition
of the people is the question of irrigation. Irriga­
tion works for which capital accounts are kept paid
8.65 per cent, on the outlay in 1906-7, a sure proof,
as are the railway returns, that India profits enor­
mously by the expenditure within her limits of
money chiefly borrowed on easy terms in England
and unobtainable elsewhere. The estimated value
of the crops raised was about ^35,500,000, or
F
r ( m T MODERN INDIA (g T
109 per cent, of the capital outlay expenc^u*^
'upon the twenty-two millions of acres irrigated.
There were in 1898 in India 225 cotton-mills,
45 jute, 6 woollen, and 9 paper, mills, and breweries
producing upwards of 5^ millions of gallons a year.
There were in all 1922 joint stock companies, the
output of coal amounted to upwards of eleven millions
of tons, and there were over 30,000 miles of railway
working, the average return on the capital expendi­
ture on which was 5.85 per cent, in 1907, as against
3 J, in England.
A Bill is now before the Governor-General’s
Legislative Council which provides for a reduction
in the hours of labour in textile factories, which
sometimes extended to fifteen hours a day or more,
to a day not exceeding twelve hours, deals drastically
with serious abuses that existed in connection with the
employment of children, and gives power to Local
Governments to apply its provisions to other factories
if necessary. Direct restriction on the hours of
labour was recommended by the Committee of 1906
and by a minority report of the subsequent Commis­
sion, the majority of which proposed to attain the
same end by indirect means.
It is true, of course, that in the East labour is not
organised as it is in Britain and is not continuous
but intermittent and spasmodic,but it is calculated that
a large number of operatives are likely to lose their
employment by the introduction of the shortened
f ( ( W W ECONOM ICS y
XV'^rotjrs, and the abolition of shifts, which is a lm S s r ^
xbrtain to follow, seeing that a 13^-hour day is quite
the maximum possible. This loss of labour has
been roughly estimated at about one-sixth, or in
other words, some 35,000 mill-workers will perhaps
be thrown out of employment. When this legisla­
tion is firmly established there will doubtless be a
further extension of mills, the erection of which will
tend to absorb all superfluous labour, but meanwhile
the possibility of this wholesale dismissal is the one
serious practical objection to the proposed legislation.
A s a matter of fact it cannot be said with any truth
that the operatives have been in any degree over­
worked, for the actual hours of labour put in by any
of them on time wage seldom exceeded eleven hours,
though of course the piece-workers put in as much
work as they liked to make money for themselves.
Besides this fact there were the casual and regular
holidays so freely taken, that they reduced the
average hours of labour year in and year out to
quite a moderate quantity. A t the same time there
has always been a certain amount of discontent at
the nominally long hours during which the mill
engines worked, and there was always the tempta­
tion for the more avaricious mill-owners rather to
exceed moderation, if it were possible, so that it is
not altogether unreasonable that their ardour and
energy should be restrained by law.
The total value of imports and exports in 1907-8,
 1poIJjN.
(i f W 4 W MODERN INDIA In T
4
|A>^rap atter exceeding the former by about 2\ millioh?-^^
sterling, was ,£241,000,000. The United Kingdom
is the chief importer from India, and next after
the United Kingdom come Germany, the United
States, China, and France. The chief imports into
India are manufactured yarns and textile fabrics,
manufactured metals, machinery, railway plant, and
articles of food and drink, while the chief exports are
raw materials, articles of food and drink, and yarns
and textile fabrics wholly or partially manufactured.
The chief articles of British produce exported to
India are cotton manufactures, cotton yarn, iron
and ironwork and machinery, and the chief crops
raised in the country are rice, wheat, and other
cereals, cotton and oil seeds, while smaller areas
are given to valuable products like tea, indigo, and
tobacco.
0)5
A / —~N\V\

--%#/*
/'■ 'i

<SL

C H A P T E R VI

A R M Y —A N G L O -R U SSIA N CO N VENTIO N

A comparatively old story was revived when Lord

Curzon, during the Session of 1909, resuscitated in
Parliament the differences between himself and Lord
Kitchener concerning the administration of military
affairs in India, which led to his own resignation of
the office of Viceroy.
The Military Department had, till Lord
Kitchener’s arrival, been in the hands of a mem­
ber of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, who was
always a soldier of distinction. He was adviser
to the Viceroy on all military questions, and the
Commander-in-Chief, who was also appointed, as
a matter of course, Extraordinary Member of the
Executive Council, was responsible for discipline,
promotion, mobilisation, and other functions neces­
sarily appertaining to the head of the army, any
proposals he had to make in this capacity conning
before the Governor-General in Council, through
the Military Member and the Military Depart­
ment.
Lord Kitchener was by no means the first
85
 MODERN INDIA
r^ ^ ^ n m an d er-in -C h ief to object to this system, ancrpy j j
desired to create a department dealing with military
administration in every branch, of which the Com-
mander-in-Chief should be the head.
Lord Curzon, however, with the support, it should
not be forgotten, of the Members of his Council,
held that in this event all military authority would
be concentrated in the hands of the Commander-in-
Chief, whereby the supreme control of the Civil
Power over the army would be lost.
The Secretary of State, Lord Midleton, was
willing to retain the Military Member of Council,
but in a position in which Lord Curzon thought he
would not be able to tender independent advice
upon military matters, in which case the Governor-
General in Council would be left without expert aid
to face the Commander-in-Chief reinforced with
largely increased powers.
Lord Curzon also thought that the Member for
Military Supply, as the new occupant of the old
office on the new footing was to be called, should be
an officer whom the Government considered fit to
be their general adviser in military matters.
It was hard for the Government of India to
object to a reform which had been approved by a
Committee of which two ex-Commanders-in-Chief
in India, Lord Roberts and Sir George White, were
members, but they had no liking for the change,
and desired to appoint an officer of whom the
( ( W n \: army f a t
V -@ C n b m e t at home did not approve, for the s im p l i
X^ ^ Seaso n that his past training and very distinguished
service, made it unlikely that he would be able to
inaugurate the new system with an open mind and
without inconvenient prepossessions. Lord Curzon,
in short, wanted the new Member to be as much
as possible like the old Member, and the Home
Government wanted to make the change desired by
Lord Kitchener, and the upshot was that Lord Curzon
resigned. The whole correspondence was published
for the perusal of the public, but it appeared from
Lord .Curzon’s speech in the House of Lords that
it was not he, but Lord Kitchener who desired
that a step should be taken, which had a deplorable
effect in India, where the Government had hitherto
been regarded as a body of one mind, and the
Viceroy' as its almost sacrosanct head. And as
Lord Morley in 1909 abolished the Member for
Military Supply, Lord Kitchener has won all
along the line, with, it must be confessed, the
general approval of the military element.
Lord Morley, who had taken office in the middle
of this embittered controversy, throughout endea­
voured to safeguard the fundamental principle that
the Government of India in all its branches, includ­
ing the control of the army, was responsible to the
Secretary of State in Council, and he laid special
emphasis on the fact that the Indian army was one
of the most difficult and delicate problems with
i( W )t\ MODERN INDIA Iq j
the Government had to deal, especially
irfms when a body recruited from the native popula­
tion could hardly be expected to escape altogether
from the influences rife amongst the classes from
which its members were drawn. H e held that the
creation of the Department of Military Supply in the
place of the abolished Military Department was only
a provisional and tentative arrangement, in fact,
a mere compromise between the views of Lord
Kitchener and Lord Curzon, and that it had been un­
successful in attaining what might safely be assumed
to have been the main object in creating it, namely,
a middle course which both the Viceroy and the
Commander-in-Chief could accept. No one could
be a better judge of the situation than Lord Morley,
for it was he who by his tactful and conciliatory
treatment had relieved a state of prolonged tension
which was gravely affecting the efficiency of the
public service, and bringing the Government into
something dangerously like contempt. Lord Minto,
who followed Lord Curzon as Viceroy, set to work
to carry out this compromise, and succeeding in
producing harmonious co-operation between all con­
cerned, he rather inclined to deprecate the reopening
of the question.
In deference to this opinion, apparently some­
what against his own better judgment, Lord
Morley resolved to let the matter rest for the
time being, but by 1907 the Government of
(lr I g j l ARMY \CT
had come round to his opinion that the
proposed abolition of the Military Supply Member
was based, administratively and economically, on
sound arguments, and would sooner or later have
to be effected.
He accordingly gave effect to his own view,
being unwilling to continue to spend ;£ 10,000 a
year, the amount involved in the continuance of the
Supply Department, merely in order to postpone
the settlement of an official question which presented
certain difficulties. In point of tact, being deter­
mined to grasp the nettle, in 1909 he abolished the
Military Supply Department, with the approval of
the head of that Department himself, and of course
of Lord Kitchener, who continued until later in the
year to be Commander-in-Chief. Lord Morley did
not, like Lord Curzon, fear that the abolition of
the Military Supply Department would lead to the
establishment of a military despotism, dethrone the
Government of India from the constitutional control
of the Indian army, and set up in its place a single
Commander-in-Chief as supreme head.
Lord Minto, for his part, considered that the
change, while giving the Commander-in-Chief wider
administrative powers, had in fact rather lessened
his independence of action, because, amongst other
reasons, the post of Secretary to the Army Depart­
ment was to be held by a distinguished general
officer, who was fully entitled to difter from the head
n S )® MODERN INDIA
Department (the Commander-in-Chief), aha
^Tiad free access to the Viceroy. It certainly does
seem satisfactorily established that the Commander-
in-Chief has by no means occupied a position of
military autocracy under the new system since
the initial change, and it may reasonably be hoped
that he will not do so now that the reform is
carried to its ultimate and inevitable conclusion.
Leaving this much vexed and most important
question to consider Lord Kitchener’s general
administration, it may be said that he pursued a wise
policy of devolution, and delegated to Divisional
Commands many duties which had previously been
centralised in Simla or in Calcutta. True decen­
tralisation does not mean the lessening of the control
at headquarters, but the giving of more powers of
initiative and direction to the general and other
subordinate officers.
If, as has been calculated, military charges
have increased by upwards of two millions sterling
— as a fact an over estimate of ^300,000— since
1902, when Lord Kitchener assumed command, it
must be remembered that that large sum, spread
over five years, provided amongst other things
for re-arming the artillery with quick-firing guns,
and the whole army with the new rifle, and that
in every progressive and prosperous State, there
is yearly more to be protected, and revenues in­
crease, and the expenditure is augmented in like
 ARMY /o L

\C vS ^ 7u n d er every head of account, including tb a fX j

of national insurance. The worst enemies of any
administration would be those who allowed this
insurance to become inadequate. As a fact the
amount of the permanent annual increase cannot
yet be accurately determined, but it is pretty certain
it will not exceed three-quarters of a million.
It is the case, as Sir Charles Dilke lately stated
in Parliament, that nine divisions ready equipped
for over-sea expeditions now exist in India, but it
is not the case that the Indian army is of such
strength that these nine divisions could be sent out of
the country, and the Indian Empire, from an internal
point of view, be still adequately defended. Lord
Kitchener, it is true, said that a sufficient force
could and would be left to maintain public security,
by which presumably he meant little more than that
the Empire could be policed during the absence of
the main army.
Lord Kitchener is entitled to great credit for
the improvements he effected in the transport
system, and when this all important subject is
under consideration the previous services in this
behalf of General Sir Edwin Collen should not be
overlooked.
It becomes more and more apparent that, if
Great Britain is to maintain her present place of
pride in the world, a striking force, capable of
leaving India for parts of the Empire situated
/ / > —n\ \
if M O D ER N IN D IA I

\%\^5t§arer to her shores than to Great B ritain /t^ L i

i vjt;al necessity. India must be regarded from
an Imperial point of view, and it is impossible
to exactly demarcate the lines between her
own peculiar, and the general imperial, interests.
India’s military and naval needs must always be
identical with those of Great Britain, and un­
friendly critics who dwell upon the army expendi­
ture conveniently forget that a navy is provided for
the defence of her thousands of miles of coast-line
at the expense of the British taxpayer. Already
the statutory provision that no force in India shall
be used beyond the limits of that country without
the leave of Parliament is unduly hampering the
Government of India in meeting its many and great
responsibilities. For instance, in the now happily
improbable event of our being at war with Russia,
the defeat of the Russian fleet in the Baltic, or of
Russian troops on the shores of the North Sea,
would be as effective as a reverse experienced on
the Indian frontier.
The part and lot in the Empire which India
plays is so pre-eminently great that it is hopeless to
try to find any analogies between her position in
respect of military charges, and that of any of our
colonies, in which we maintain small garrisons.
In point of fact, the greater part of the corpus
of the British army at any given time is in India,
and the system of supplying her with troops
(l f | | ) *) ARMY (c t
^ W ^ ^ s a r i l y determines the policy to be pursued*1 - '
at home.
Under the Cardwell system her requirements
have been successfully met, and it would be tatal to
substitute for that arrangement any other which
would leave it to the chance vote of a possibly
parsimonious or unimperial Parliament to endanger
the regular supply of troops, upon which alone the
retention of our Eastern Empire depends.
In like manner it is inevitable that India
should participate in increases in the pay of British
soldiers, and there is no proof that she could provide
men for herself at cheaper rates, or indeed that she
would be able to provide the necessary proportion
of Europeans at all by any feasible plan. The
recent increase in the pay of the native soldier was
a very wise and necessary measure. A rise was
due upon general grounds, and in consideration of
the increases which have occurred in other occupa­
tions. The action taken was not only felix oppor-
tunitate, but was founded upon a claim, the equal
justice and expediency of recognising which Lord
Morley allowed from the early days of his appoint­
ment to the India Office. It had long been evident
that an increase was necessary, and few wiser steps
have been taken in recent years; but to Lord
Morley is due the credit for having actually brought
it about, and having provided the necessary ex­
penditure. The comfort and contentment of the
 X\V\
/|/ MODERN INDIA I n j
troops have also been greatly enhancedhr^^
~une extension of free passes, and the grant of
free kit, boots, forage and firewood, further facilities
for furlough, and improvements in the pension
rules.
No extra charges, however, are imposed on
Indian revenues without the closest scrutiny before
a mixed committee, on which those responsible for
the finances of India are strongly represented. It
is extremely easy to say that military charges shall
not increase. It is impossible, however, that in­
surance charges should not be augmented in pro­
portion to the increase in the value of that which is
protected.
The British troops in India are lent to, and
paid for by, the Indian Government, from which
also a capitation charge of ios. per head for
the expenses of recruiting and training the recruit
is levied. No doubt this is a high charge, but it
remains to be proved that India could do the
same thing for herself at lower cost, and it is in
fact improbable that she could find the material
upon which to work.
In addition to the army proper the Govern­
ment utilises the Imperial Service Corps, a force
of 20,000 men, kept up by certain native States,
but specially drilled and instructed under British
supervision. In this way a good deal of the necessary
transport in frontier expeditions is provided, the
W v^ ^ e^ ^ st assistance being given by the M a h a ra j^ ^ L i
of Cashmere, Gwalior, Patiala, and others.
As the Master of Elibank said in the House
of Commons last session : “ The scheme of Imperial
Service troops, introduced in 1889, was based on
offers made by Indian Princes to contribute
towards the defence of India; and was established
on the principle that the maintenance of these
troops by Indian Princes in their territories should
be voluntary. The voluntary nature of the under­
takings on which the system is based has always
been recognised.” The contrary has just been
stated in a mischievous little book called “ India,”
by Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., in vrhich it is sug­
gested or implied that native princes are forced
to keep their troops for the benefit of the British
in India. Not indeed that there is in any case,
as the ruling chiefs themselves are the first to
acknowledge, anything other than complete identity
of interest.
The Presidency armies of Bombay, Bengal,
and Madras, the original administrative divisions
of what was then the Indian Empire, first began
with the enrolment of Sepoys in 1748 by Major
Stringer Lawrence in order to fight the French.
Each army was distinct and self-contained, and
under leaders like Clive the men soon showed
their fighting powers.
After the battle of Plassey the Sepoy forces
(if W 9V1 MODERN INDIA v fil
V ^ E ^ fie re reorganised and increased, and subsequently
to the annexations which followed the third
Mahratta War, the three Presidential armies
consisted of 24,000 British and 134,000 native
troops, numbers which increased just before the
Mutiny to 39,500 British and 311,000 natives,
a disparity which looks, and which proved,
dangerous.
During the great crisis the Punjab Frontier
Force, the Hyderabad Contingent, and the
Madras and Bombay armies remained true to us,
and the rebellion was chiefly that of the Bengal
army, and due, like most other agitations in India,
to the intrigues of the highest, ablest, and not un­
naturally, most anti-British, class, the Brahmins.
Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood and General
Sir Edwin Collen have both recorded the opinion
that amongst the causes of the Mutiny was the
effort to graft Western ideals upon Oriental
customs, and the fact is one which should not
be forgotten at the present day when the
Government at home and in India is insistently
urged by a small party of denationalised natives
of India to force further realisations of Western
ideals upon people altogether unfitted, or at any
rate unready, for their reception.
That acute and experienced observer, Sir
Joseph Fayrer, has pointed out that Lord Dal-
housie erred in thinking that the administration

i
[ £/ ■ \V \ ARM Y ( / .■ _
\ » B W was unpopular with th’e natives b e c a u s Q JN
T ^ t f r e shortcomings which no doubt, from an
European point of view, existed, and there are
others who think with him that advances made
in the direction of representative government to
please a small minority will hardly be counted
unto us for righteousness when the day ot trial
comes.
But, however that may be, there is no doubt
that the powerful influence of the Brahmins in
the Bengal army was one of the chief causes of
the Mutiny, just as the present unrest is caused by
members of the same caste and other castes of
identical ideals, interests, and ambitions.
At that time, too, our disasters in Afghanistan
had dissipated the belief that the British arms
were ever victorious, just as at the present
moment the victory of Japan has produced a like
effect, as regards Europeans in general, upon the
peoples of the East.
Then as now, moreover, secret agents were
actively trying to debauch the loyalty of the
troops. There is, however, happily no cause from
these premises to deduce the conclusion that
another mutiny is impending, which indeed the
writer does not believe, but there are signs and
portents making caution and preparation essential,
and the country has cause to be thankful that at
the present moment an eminent statesman and
G
 MODERN INDIA /^j
partisan or a politician is in power afj^ i g j
-India Office.
After the Mutiny the European army of the
Company came under the control of the Crown,
and a Royal Commission advised that the
Europeans should be 80,000 strong, and that the
native troops should not exceed them by more
than 2 to 1 in Bengal and 3 to 1 in Bombay
and Madras. This wise advice was adopted,
and continues to be followed to the present day,
though the number o f Europeans is somewhat
below the prescribed strength.
In 1893 an Act was passed whereby the office
of Commander-in-Chief in Madras and Bombay
was abolished, and the function of military control
was withdrawn from the Governors of those
Presidencies.
India was subsequently in 1895 divided into
four Territorial commands under Lieutenant-
Generals— Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and the
Punjab. Subsequently Burma was practically
made a separate command, and the army ot
India consisted in 1903 of five commands, made
57 94
up of 74,170 British and x , 1 native troops.
In 1899 the army, thus reorganised, was able to
despatch to South Africa the force that saved
Natal, and since 1902 Lord Kitchener, in addition
to the changes above described, has introduced a
new scheme of military organisation, based upon
IfM RMY (nr
; Recognition of the fact that our army’s chief
\ < t „ occupation is the defence of the North-West
Frontier, and that our forces in time of peace
should be organised and trained in the same
formations in which they will operate in time of
war, and be under the same commanders and the
same staffs.
The whole of the forces in India are now
divided into two armies, the Northern army and
the Southern army, the former including the
Peshawar, Rawal Pindi, Lahore, Meerut, and
Lucknow divisions, and the latter the Ouetta,
Ihow, Poona, and Secunderabad divisions, with
the troops in Burma.
The present strength is—British troops, officers
and men, 78 ,318 ; native troops, 158,054, making a
t°ta* of 236,372, to which may be added 34,000
volunteers and 20,000 Imperial Service troops,
whereby a grand total of 290,000 is reached, and
the total cost of maintaining the regular forces is
about ^19,000,000 a year.
Regiments are now under the new scheme
organised on the class company and class
squadion system, and the volunteers, who have
c-one splendid work in India in the past, are so
rganised that they may be able to repeat their
record should occasion arise in the future.
The 8abject of military expenditure is one
upon which many controversies have arisen, the
(*( J 0)® MODERN INDIA
N ^artiterities in India frequently objecting to tire
debits which are made against them at home.
There is a school, of which Sir Charles Dilke
is the able and chief exponent, which holds that in
consequence of the Anglo-Russian Convention all
danger from that quarter has been removed, and that
our defensive preparations might safely be relaxed.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that
history affords no ground for the view that a nation
lately worsted in wrar is unlikely again to take up
arms.
Rather is there ground for supposing that under
such circumstances a high-spirited people are more
likely to endeavour to redress defeat in one, by
success in another, quarter.
Nor is there any guarantee that the Convention
and the good understanding will last, or that Russia
or any other country will value our alliance or co­
operation unless we have a sufficient backing of
British infantry and British battleships, and on this
score the action of the Socialist, internationalist,
and small armament groups in the British Parlia­
ment induces a not unnatural but an unfortunate
feeling of doubt on the part of foreign nations.
It has not yet been reported that the Russian
garrisons in 1 urkestan and along the frontiers ot
Persia and Afghanistan have been reduced, and the
time for us to follow suit, if it come at all, has
certainly not yet arrived,
(|7 | | jf\ \ \ ARMY

cost of the army in India takes into accotmf^

Improvements in armaments, equipments, and or­
ganisation, the raising of the pay of the native and
British soldiers, the establishment of cordite, gun­
casting, and small arms factories, and the supply
of new guns and rifles. The present expenditure
is about eighteen and a half millions exclusive of
nearly a million for special Works, m aking a total
of over nineteen millions for the maintenance of an
army of 236,372 men, a force small enough, it may
readily be allowed, for the maintenance of peace in a
vast Empire with thousands of miles of land frontier,
and nearly three hundred millions of inhabitants.
Expenditure has, of course, developed since
1884-5, a°d much capital is made by the Congress
orators of the fact that it is now equal to, or, as they
say, double the amount of the land revenue ; but
the fact is overlooked that the Indian army is one
of the chief factors in maintaining the balance of
power in Asia, and that, with the exception of an
annual contribution of ,£100,000, the Home Govern­
ment bears the entire cost of the navy, without which
peace could not be maintained in India for a year.
Admiration for the excellent work by universal
consent accomplished by Lord Kitchener in no way
connotes depreciation of the labours of his able
predecessors as Commander-in-Chief and Military
Member of Council.
The Indian army was, of course, a fine fighting
 ’ Got$ X
MODERN INDIA

thanks to Lord Roberts, Sir G. C h e s J ^ L i

" <• Sir Henry Brackenbury, Sir G. White, and Sir E.
Collen, before the days of Lord Kitchener, and
he has been fortunate in being in command in fat
years, but nevertheless it required great adminis­
trative courage as well as great administrative
ability to carry through what is generally known
as his redistribution scheme, which included indeed
the redistribution of troops, but also the reallotment
of commands. The original scheme, as described
m previous pages, was to organise the Indian army
into nine large divisions over and above garrisons
allotted to different stations for maintaining inter­
nal peace. Each division was to be composed in
the same manner in which it would take the field
m war, and to be commanded by the same officers.
Later three lieutenant-generals were to command
tnree divisions, but the number has since been re­
duced to two, the commanders of the Northern and
Southern armies. It was originally proposed to
concentrate the troops at great centres in order
that better conditions of training might be ob­
tained, and two large stations on the North-West
Frontier were to be created for this purpose. This
pait of the scheme, with its resulting great expense
was postponed rather than abandoned, but the
organisation of the whole army on a war basis
v\as effected, so that everything is ready in self-
contained units waiting mobilisation. The good
 ARM Y /xL.

\ k m ^ M s were apparent during the little cam panfl i

Xs-5r: 'last year against the Mohmands, when the trans­
port system, elaborated by General Sir Edward
Collen in 1898, and perfected by Lord Kitchener,
proved its efficiency down to the last strap and
buckle. Lord Kitchener was fortunate in being
able to act on the obvious truism, which hardly any
one dared enunciate in England till quite recently,
that an army is an instrument of war, and is a sham
and pretence if not ready to take the field ; and he
was fortunate to be able to act without reference to
Parliament, in which a large party, or at any rate a
party too large for safety, appears to think, not­
withstanding ocular demonstration to the contrary,
that the millennium has arrived, and that other
nations will leave us in possession of the best
portions of the earth’s surface, out of respect for
our superior humanity and the greater purity of
our motives, in which as a fact they profoundly
disbelieve.
Among smaller, but yet not small, reforms ac­
complished by Lord Kitchener may be instanced
the establishment of a Staff College at Quetta.
That Lord Kitchener’s work in India has been
admirable, and that it required a man of his strong
will and great administrative ability to carry it
through, few will be found to deny. He has now
been succeeded by another very able and distin­
guished officer, with special knowledge of Indian
f((^ W MODERN INDIA IC T
\ c v ® m i o n s and of native troops. It remains to
se^rf n General Sir O’Moore Creagh will accept in
its entirety Lord Kitchener’s system, and will work
on the same lines,
I he Anglo-Russian Convention has so often
been claimed by the advocates of reduction at any
price as a reason for disbanding part of the Indian
army, that a short examination of this instrument is
necessary even in this little work.
Before the English and Russians had concluded
that most useful agreement, the rivalry of the two
nations in the East was one of the main features
of Asiatic and European politics.
In 1890 Prince Esper Ukhtomsky, who described
the present Czar’s Eastern travels, predicted that
the Japanese, who seemed “ unconscious of the
spiritual affinity between the Russians and the
Eastern peoples, would soon doff the mask of
friendship with the English. It was Russia only
that could protect Korea and save China, and
there were no bounds to be set to Russian dominion
in Asia.”
Events have marched since then, and the advance
oi Russia in the East has been stayed ; but if she has
reduced her garrison in Central Asia, which only
two years ago had a peace strength of 57,000 and
a war strength of 99,000 men, completely equipped
in all respects, she has not published the fact, and
indeed there is no reason whatever for thinking
/ & < ^ $\ ’
t( J | j ! ARMY
she has effected any reductions. Russia,
indeed, is as able now as she was before the war
with Japan to place on the Afghan Frontier an
army only limited by the carrying power of her
lately improved and completed Central Asian
Railway system.
It is believed by competent observers that this
line has double the carrying capacity of the Siberian
Railway, which nevertheless maintained an army
of 400,OCX) men in the field at a far greater
distance from the base during the late war.
Mr. David F raser, a recent and very capable
observer, calculated that thirty-six trains a day
could be passed through from Krasnovodsk, on
the Caspian and Orenburg, to the point of con­
centration, if the rolling-stock were sufficient.
Russia’s offensive power on the Afghan Frontier
would be double that which enabled her to meet
the tremendous strain experienced in Manchuria.
She could maintain an array of half a million of
men on the Afghan Frontier and at Herat, which
she could take whenever she chose. Yet there are
those, among them notably Sir Charles Dilke, who
think the Indian army could be safely reduced
because of the Convention. Those who hold this
view must shut their eyes to the facts of history,
conveniently forget the exaltation, within recent
times, of Prussia to the practical hegemony of the
Continent, and refuse to remember that defeat in
 ”Go%\
vX MODERN INDIA |d t
Vx.A^^pnever yet prevented a great power from secki^-*-^
victory in another, quarter.
The integrity of Persia is of course a vital
question for the English in India, and in proportion
as it is secured by the arrangement with Russia, so
is the importance to us of Afghanistan, as a frontier
factor, proportionately diminished.
No agreement with Russia will enable us to
reduce the Indian army, which, as the extent
of territory and numbers of the population to
be guarded have increased, has not undergone a
corresponding augmentation, and remains, as far as
the European troops are concerned— that all impor­
tant leaven without which the whole is of no avail
— at a lower figure than was decided soon after the
Mutiny to be necessary, not for purposes of aggres­
sion or external warfare, but for the safety of the
English in India.
There is one respect in which we could
strengthen our frontier without expenditure of
English or Indian money, and that is by ab­
staining from irritating and insulting speeches
in Parliament regarding the actions of Maho-
medan powers. Perhaps now that authority in
Turkey has been diverted from the old to the
young Turks, there will be less difficulty on
this score, but counsels of moderation are also
required in the treatment of the so-called Mace­
donian question, and it is high time that critics
((( lit y|\ ARMY
KCvJgej^ding to the possession of even elementafy-^^
information, should abandon the absurd belief that
the Mahomedan is always a bad man in the wrong,
and that the good man in the right is invariably
the Christian.
The British Government and its Foreign Minis­
ter, Sir Edward Grey, showed true statesmanship
in 1907 in taking occasion by the hand, and, when
Russia, bleeding from wounds received in Man­
churia, had called a halt in the Middle East, in sign-
ing a Convention with her defining the position in
Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet, which, though not
perfect in every particular, was upon the whole
highly satisfactory, and brought about a very wel­
come relaxation of the strained relations which had
till then existed between the two countries. Indeed,
more than that, it forged a good working friendly
agreement.
It had already become evident that if Russian
rivalry with ourselves had continued, her plan was
to turn the flank of the North-West Frontier by
penetrating Persia to the Gulf, and the Afghan
Frontier had therefore already ceased to have that
supreme importance, which to it formerly attached.
The northern shore and Hinterland of the Gulf,
m which our influence is quite as paramount as that
°i Russia in Persia north of Teheran, should no
doubt have been placed within our own sphere of
influence, but the guarantee of the independence
///^ % \ p
(f( If r i MODERN INDIA V flT
integrity of Persia was worth a sacrifice,‘‘and if
we proceed to occupy with claims and concessions
the northern shores of the Gulf, little harm will
have been done, while the Convention itself, soon
indeed to be put to a severe test, has proved equal
to the occasion, and has already saved Persia from
anarchy and dismemberment.
It is curious that Russia should be attacked,
through the person of the Emperor, by the Demo­
crats and Socialists of England, just at a time when
the Russian monarch has conferred Parliamentary
institutions upon his own country, and when his
troops have been the means of allowing the Nation­
alists to expel an autocratic Shah and to place a boy
puppet on the throne in Persia.
The Nationalists were at the last gasp in Tabriz
when Russia and England interfered and forced
the Shah to grant a truce. The breathing time the
Nationalists thus gained, and the firmness infused
into their councils, supplied them with the very
little courage and determination necessary for the
march on Teheran, which, thanks entirely to the
Convention, they entered without striking a blow.
That the two great powers were neutral cannot
indeed be said. They favoured the Nationalists,
who but for them had already been beaten.
With these occurrences India is immediately
and closely connected, and Afghanistan now takes
second place. That country is recognised by the
(\ 8 y) ARMY x(fiT
■ .Convention as outside the Russian sphere of in-
fTuence, while with regard to Tibet the Agreement
merely confirms the policy of Mr. Balfour’s Govern­
ment, which decided to veto the appointment of
a British Resident at Lhassa, to recognise the
suzerainty of China, and to evacuate the Chumbi
valley.
Thus were the fruits of Lord Curzon’s expedition
lost, and though it cannot be said that the British
Government had not some reason for dreading-
to incur further responsibilities north of the
Himalayas, it cannot be denied that we got little
or nothing for our pains.
(f f l) (ct

CH APTER V II
A D M IN IS T R A T IO N —D E C E N T R A L I S A T I O N —LOCAL
BO ARD S—R E V E N U E

T h e Government of the Indian Empire is estab­

lished by the Government of India Act, 1858
(21 & 22 Viet. cap. 106), by which all the territories
under the East India Company were vested in the
Crown, to which under the Royal Titles Act, 1876 ,
(39 .& 40 Viet. cap. 10), the title of Emperor of India
attaches.
The administration in England is vested in the
Secretary of State for India, assisted by a Council
of not less than ten and not more than fourteen mem­
bers, of whom all but one must have resided for ten
years in India, and must not have left India more than
five years previous to their appointment (Council of
India Act, 1907). No appropriation of the revenues
of India can be made without the concurrence of
a majority of votes of the Council at a meeting at
which a quorum of five members must be present.
The Secretary of State, however, in questions
affecting the relations of the Government of India
with foreign powers, in making peace or war, in
matters of policy relating to native States, and
no
 ADMINISTRATION
N ^ ^ ^ & c a lly in all urgent and secret matters, subjeEJ-l-J
to the above reservation as regards finance, can
act on his own authority. The extent to which
he avails himself of this power chiefly depends, of
course, upon the experience, eminence, influence,
and temperament of the holder of this great
office.
The supreme executive authority in India is
vested in the Governor-General in Council, who
generally, but by no means necessarily, holds office
for five years, his appointment, however, continu­
ing under his warrant until his successor is nomi­
nated by the Crown. The Council consists of six
ordinary members and one extraordinary mem­
ber, the Commander-in-Chief: the members are
appointed by the Crown and ordinarily hold
office for five years. The work of the Council
is distributed among eight departments— Home,
Foreign, Finance, Army, Public Works, Revenue
and Agriculture, Legislative, and Commerce and
Industry— the last-named being the creation of Lord
Curzon’s Government, the Military Supply Depart­
ment of whose, and of Lord Minto’s, term of office
has, under circumstances explained in Chapter V I.,
been abolished. To each department is attached a
Secretary, and, with the exception of the Foreign
and Arm y Departments, which are assigned to the
Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief re­
spectively, each one is placed in the charge of one or
/ & . V\ '
if ^ 2\ | \ MODERN INDIA Iq j
\%7<llihpr/ of the ordinary members. The GovernfcuJ-l^i i
General draws a salary of R s .250,800 (,£16,720),
the Governors of Madras and Bombay, Rs. 120,000
(.£8000), and the Lieutenant-Governors of Bengal,
Eastern Bengal and Assam, the United Provinces of
Agra and Oudh, the Punjab and Burma, Rs. 100,000
(£6666), while Chief Commissioners in charge of
small provinces, and charges such as the Central
Provinces, the N orth-W est Frontier Province,
Ajmere, Baluchistan, and the Andaman Islands,
draw smaller salaries.
T he Governors of Madras and Bombay are ap­
pointed by the Crown, the Lieutenant-Governors
by the Governor-General, subject to the approbation
of the Crown, the Chief Commissioners by the
Governor-General, and the Governors and Lieu­
tenant-Governors are assisted, like the Governor-
General, by Legislative Councils.
All the provinces and all the revenues raised in
India are under the control of the Government of
India, but the degree of administrative and financial
independence enjoyed varies in different cases.
The administration of British India, however good
in intention and efficient in execution, is apt, like that
of all other countries, to run into grooves, even to
lapse into error, and some sort of periodical stock­
taking is no less advantageous in this than in other
businesses. It must be obvious that one central
Government, controlling many local administrations
 a d m in ist r a t io n

aling with many peoples inhabiting t h e A

regions of a vast continent, must acquire a
disposition to judge varying needs by a common
standard, to impose systems, amply justified in
some cases, upon others to which their application
is less desirable, in short, to over-centralise the
direction of the vast machine of administration.
In pursuance, no doubt, of these or of some
such considerations, Lord Morley appointed a Royal
Commission to inquire into the relations existing
for financial and administrative purposes between
the Supreme and Provincial Governments in India,
and between the latter and their subordinate autho­
rities, and to report whether, by means of decen­
tralisation or otherwise, those relations could be
simplified and improved.
There was indeed a consensus of opinion, which
Lord Minto shared and led, that decentralisation
was essential. The Government ot India retain
the control at present of foreign affairs, defence,
general taxation, currency, debt, tariff, post and
telegraphs, railways, and accounts, while Provincial
Governments control internal affairs, police, civil
and criminal justice, prisons, assessment and col­
lection of revenue, education, medical and sanitary
arrangements, irrigation, buildings and roads, forests,
and rural and municipal boards, in respect of all
of which, however, the Government of India to a
considerable extent, and as the Commission thinks,
H
(a M / MODERN INDIA
\y sti^ k tr unnecessary and unwise extent, intervenfe^-^^
^ r n e y point out that India is as big as Europe less
Russia, and cannot be administered from head­
quarters, and that the importance of strengthening
the Provincial Governments coincides with that of
educating the people by a knowledge of public
affairs, acquired in their actual administration.
Sir A . T . Arundel, lately a member of the
Government of India, w rites: “ It may at once be
admitted that we have blundered badly in our
system of education, allowing almost the entire
stream to be absorbed by literary and legal studies,
to the neglect of science, mechanics, engineering,
and medicine.”
Though the men thus educated are but i per
cent, o f the population they exercise great influence
through the press, not only on the educated, but
in a less degree on the uneducated, masses, and
they desire to drive the coach for themselves, and
even at some cost of efficiency, if it prove so, a
statesman like Lord Morley, who is by no means
alone in this view, thinks they must to some
extent, and under supervision of the ruling race, be
given a trial.
T his aspect of the case gave special interest
and importance to the Commission presided over
by Mr. Hobhouse, who had lately vacated the
office of Under Secretary of State for India upon
promotion in the Ministry.
 ADMINISTRATION /015
present Madras and Bombay are ^ | J A
' ^m bfistered by Governors, assisted by Executive '
Councils, consisting, since the Presidential Arm y
system was abolished, of two civil servants, who,
even if the Governor exercised his casting vote, are
numerically as strong as he is, and by reason of the
experience of a lifetime spent in the Presidency,
much stronger.
Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam, the United
Provinces of A gra and Ouclh, Burma, and the
Punjab, are under Lieutenant-Governors, who rule
without the aid of a Council, while the Central
Provinces, the North-W est Frontier Province,.and
Baluchistan, as wrell as one or two smaller a n d .
less important administrative units, are known as
Chief Commissionerships.
In the evidence given before the Decentralisation
Commission, many of the non-official witnesses
asked that the Governor in Council constitution
should be substituted for the Lieutenant-Governor
constitution, while official witnesses, were for the
most part in favour of the continuance of the latter
system.
Arguments in favour of the Governor in Courcil
arrangement, which appears to the writer, who has
a lifelong acquaintance with it, to be indefensible
on its existing footing since the abolition of the
fourth member, are that it provides for collective
deliberation and responsibility, for the distribution
\ ( m / MODERN INDIA ^ n j
W ^© f/y/ork amongst the members, for continuity
~~policy, and for avoidance of personal idiosyncrasies,
and possibly autocratic temperament on the part of
the head of the Government. The Commission
was much impressed by the fact that Lieutenant-
Governors of great and populous provinces like
Bengal and the United Provinces of Agra and
Oudh were necessarily overburdened with work,
and favoured the Governor in Council constitution.
It was accordingly proposed in the Indian
Council Reform Bill which Lord Morley intro­
duced into the House of Lords, to take legal power
for the Government of India to effect a change
from one constitution to the other, wherever and
whenever this course was considered advisable,
and in the end it was decided to introduce into the
Province of Bengal proper the Governor in Council,
or more correctly the Lieutenant - Governor in
Council, constitution, and to provide that whenever
the Government of India wishes to introduce the
same constitution into another province, it shall
draft a Proclamation, to be laid on the table of
both Houses of Parliament for sixty days, after
which, unless an Address is presented against it,
such Proclamation shall have the force of law.
In all the larger provinces except Bombay
there is a Board of Revenue, or the equivalent, a
pinancial Commissioner, and in all except Madras
there are Commissioners, who represent a half-way
If S )s ADMINISTRATION VfiT
between the Eoard of Revenue and the
heads of the Districts, whether known as Collectors
or Deputy Commissioners.
A District is an official geographical unit
running from 1000, to as high as 15,000, square
miles, and the efficiency of the administration as
a whole depends chiefly upon the conduct of the
heads of these component parts.
1 he Decentralisation Commission arrived at the
conclusion that when Executive Councils are en­
larged or introduced, as the case may be, Boards
of Revenue might be abolished and Commissioners
retained, and few will dispute the wisdom of this
advice, inasmuch as peripatetic officers visiting all
the Districts under their official influence should
be of greater value than a Board of three or four
members all stationed at, and stationary in, the
local capital.
It wisely disapproved of the proposal which had
been made to give the Commissioner and Collector
an Advisory Council, the fact being that these
functionaries can readily obtain, and if they are at
all suited for their positions will obtain, quite as
much advice as they desire or require.
The Commission thought, however, that the
number of honorary magistrates might be aug­
mented, in order to increase the number of Indian
gentlemen engaged in the disposal of the business
of their Districts.
(*( m T MODERN INDIA { n j
I Commissioners did not find much faiHt^
with the administrative position of the Collectors,
Deputy Commissioners, and Judges, but recorded
their opinion that officers who lack any of the
many and special qualities required in the execu­
tive head of a District should never, on the mere
ground of seniority, be placed in that position, and
it should be remembered that many civil servants,
in no way wanting in intellect and character, are
perfectly fit for the judicial office, but unsuitable
for the active, bustling, over-occupied life of the
Executive, or, as he is called in India, the Revenue
officer.
The Commission regretted, as every one ac­
quainted with India would, the disintegration of
the village system, which is perhaps the inevitable
accompaniment of British rule, and they held that
in a country of which about 70 per cent, of the
inhabitants are villagers, the village must be the
foundation of any stable administrative edifice. In
pursuance of this policy they proposed to give
village committees certain powers in petty civil
and criminal cases, and in respect of sanitation,
primary schools, fuel and fodder reserves, markets
and pounds, and they suggested that these com­
mittees should be financed by assignments to them
of part of the local land cess.
In regard to Rural Boards, they allowed that
they are. in an altogether different class, which,
\( 2 ) ® ) ADMINISTRATION (g T
as will be inferred from what is said elsewhere
on the subject, is a somewhat mild description of
the case, District Boards and Municipalities really
being kept going by Government officials, and not
by elected and private members.
The Commission held that such Boards should
control the services for maintaining which they
disburse the funds, such as roads, education, hos­
pitals, dispensaries, vaccination, markets, ferries,
and pounds.
In Madras, where local self-government has
succeeded rather better than elsewhere, the Dis­
trict Boards have levied a railway cess and have
constructed railways on their own account.
This policy, though a proof of energy and
capacity on the part of the Boards concerned, is
apt to produce embarrassment unless some co­
ordinate control is exercised to prevent avoidable
competition with, or duplication of, the services of
the greater trunk lines belonging for the most part
to the Government of India.
Local Boards are financed by the levy of a
cess of one-sixteenth of a rupee (id.) on the
annual rent-value of the land, besides a Govern­
ment grant in aid of 25 per cent, of the total rent
collected.
The Commission proposes that the Government
control over these Boards should become less strict,
and that they should be allowed to shape their own
Iff 9 ° \ r MODERN INDIA I n j
w S p , subject to the condition that they p rotfid f'^-^
minimum balances.
It is doubtful whether such a policy will
prove successful, unless, as heretofore, the budget
is really prepared and its contents sanctioned, if
not initiated, by the Local Government official.
There are upwards of 750 municipalities in
India, and in the larger towns the majority of the
members of the municipal bodies are natives elected
by the ratepayers.
In regard to these bodies the Commission re­
commended that they should control the services
for which they pay, and that primary education
should be entrusted to them, secondary and higher
education being managed by the Government.
This, like many recommendations of the Commis­
sion, is no doubt of much value, but it remains to
be seen whether Government will ever have the
wit to devise, and the courage to introduce, some
system of secondary and higher education other
than that now existing, whereby, at the expense of
the masses, it manufactures from out of the classes
crowds of future office-holders and office-seekers,
or of disappointed and disaffected agitators.. It is
a subject of infinite difficulty, upon which only
those who have the infallibility of ignorance will
presume to dogmatise.
Perhaps the most important subject with which
the Commissioners had to deal is finance. Under
 ADMINISTRATION /Q }_
' existing system some heads of revenue su cln all j
^^dfnrnn, salt, customs, mint, railways, and post and
telegraphs are credited wholesale to the Govern­
ment of India, while others like law and police and
education are retained by the Local Government, a
third class like land revenue, excise, stamps, income
tax, forests and irrigation being divided between
the supreme and subordinate administrations. The
general view of the Commission is that Provincial
o
Governments should eventually be given inde­
pendent sources of revenue and certain separate
powers of taxation, and that the continuance of the
present system of, what are called in British politics,
doles should not connote any further increase of
control by the Government which grants over the
Government which receives.
No orders have yet been passed upon this very
able report, the preparation of which eloquently
testifies to the earnestness and completeness of the
elaborate inquiries made in all the chief centres in
India. It would astonish the easy critics of what
they call autocratic and bureaucratic administration
to learn what searching investigations are made,
what infinite variety of opinions, what volumes of
evidence from every conceivable quarter are col­
lected, before the Government of India proceeds
to legislate or to forge reforms for introduction, or,
as in this case, for submission to the Secretary of
State in Council for consideration, before orders are
(if ■ MODERN INDIA in y
X C K Scm ally passed upon the many and great questfeM-^
' ' - ‘ involved.
It is one of the stock criticisms against the
British Governments, supreme and local, in India,
that they spend the hot weather in the hills, but,
as a matter of fact, Simla is far better and more
centrally situated than Calcutta. Previous rulers—
Moguls, Tartars, and Persians—governed from the
uplands, and had they remained there instead of
settling in the plains, there is every reason to
believe that their sway would have been more
prolonged. Inhabitants of a cold, invigorating
climate, they were able to conquer India, but
as soon as they mingled with the dwellers in
the hot valleys of the great rivers, they became
gradually merged into the subject populations, than
which they ceased to be more strong and vigorous.
Thus they were absorbed and lost am ongst the
m illions they could no longer control, since they
no longer differed from them in mental and bodily
habit.
O f all places for the capital of India Calcutta is
one of the worst, and the steamy and enervating
climate, which has proved so deteriorating to the
natives of Bengal, cannot be other than infinitely
prejudicial to the ruling race from the West. True
the commercial importance of the city cannot be
overrated, but it is very doubtful whether the able
and independent European merchants who are the
 •Go^N.
\((WW administration
Tile and soul of the community are largely a f f e c t k r ^
'^ K y ^ o r inordinately desirous of, the presence in their
midst for three or four months of the Government
of India. The Government of Bengal they have
with them, and of that body Calcutta is, and always
must be, the headquarters. If the Government of
India had a double capital at Delhi or Agra, as the
case might be, and Simla, it would be best situated.
The Governments of Madras and Bombay, greatly
to the public advantage, divide the year between
their maritime capitals and more central inland
stations. I he Lieutenant-Governors of the Punjab
and the United Provinces follow a similar course,
and though Calcutta has, of course, a permanent and
paramount claim upon the Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal, he too has such interests in the Himalayan

health
and sub-Himalayan tracts that not only the bodily
of the members of his staff, but the in­
terests of his people in Bengal, would suffer if the.
annual move to Darjeeling were wholly abolished.
Indeed, under Sir Norman Baker it is evident
that the exodus to the hills is already by way of
being restricted in extent, and largely curtailed in
length.
This question is vital in connection with the health
of the army. The bulk of the 78,000 British troops
are in the uplands of the Punjab and Baluchistan,
and, in diminishing numbers, in the United Provinces,
Bombay and Madras, and the smallest number of
 G0%x
r( MODERN INDIA ( g j
in Bengal. Moreover, the majority of t l O e ^
troops are situated close to military stations in the
Himalayas, where more than half their numbers
spend the summer ; nor are suitable hill stations
wanting in other parts of India. None perhaps of
our soldiers and civilians are more fortunate than
those who summer in “ the sweet, half English a ir”
of the Nilgiris.
No doubt the enemies of British rule in India
would like to see all the white civil servants and
soldiers sweltering in the plains till they became
unfit to meet a crisis when it arrived ; but the
friends of their own country realise that our
civilians and our troops can only be kept in health
and efficiency by being as much as possible in a
cool climate in the hot weather, and by reducing the
garrisons in the more unhealthy stations to the
smallest possible dimensions. Were consistency
expected of agitators, it might be pointed out that
if the Indian taxpayer is to have the best return
for his money, the civilians and soldiers that he
maintains must be kept where they can best main­
tain their health and efficiency.
The revenues of India for 1908-9 were esti­
mated at ,£76,772,000, and the expenditure at
£ 7 2,867,400, being in each case slightly higher
than the actual figures of 1907-8. Land revenue
brings in nearly ,£20,000,000, and the other chief
heads of receipt are opium, now fast diminishing, salt,
 ------

A D M IN IST R A T IO N J^ L
' - stamps, excise, customs, post and telegraphs, irri­
gation, and railways. The military expenditure is
rather more than the land revenue, and is, of course,
the chief head on the debit side ; but there is no
naval bill in addition to pay. A large falling off in
opium, to satisfy those who regard it as wicked to
supply China, which also grows the poppy, with
the drug, is a serious matter, and from the Indian
taxpayers’ point of view hard to justify; while
the salt revenue progressively declines as further
reductions are made in the duty, which has now
come down to one rupee, or is. 4T, for a maund
of 83 lbs.
The land revenue, which is described in Chapter
V., is permanently settled in most of Bengal, a
quarter of Madras, and in parts of the United
Provinces ; elsewhere it is periodically fixed.
In the permanently settled tracts the incidence
of the land revenue is about two-thirds of a rupee
(iod.) per acre of cultivated land, about one-fifth of
the rental, and about one-twenty-fourth of the gross
value of the produce. In the temporarily settled
tracts it averages about one and a half rupees (as.)
per acre, is rather less than half the rental, and
averages about one-tenth of the gross value of
the produce.
The total debt of India is less than £ 2 50,000,000,
and is not more than half that of England in pro­
portion to the revenue, while most of the amount
if
/ V V s rx V\
MODERN INDIA Iq j
\^^5®pi>esents money raised at favourable rates
remunerative capital expenditure.
These figures fully justify Sir Michael Hicks
Beach’s (Lord St. Aldwyn) statement, when Chan­
cellor of the Exchequer, to the effect that the
finances of India are in better condition than those
of the United Kingdom.
 < S L

C H A P T E R V III

TH E CIVIL SERVICE—EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS

T hemerchants, factors, and writers o f the East

India Company were the official ancestors of the
present Civil Service, and were organised upon
their present footing by Lord Cornwallis. It was,
however, his predecessors, Clive and Hastings, who
had increased the pay drawn by these functionaries,
in order to suppress the practice, which existed
unchecked, if not openly encouraged, under which
the servants of the Company supplemented their
exiguous official emoluments by the profits o f private
trade, and perhaps in other less presentable ways.
The directors used to nominate writers, and
in 1805 the College at Haileybury was established,
wherein their nominees were trained before they
were sent out to India. In 1855, however, the
Indian Civil Service was thrown open to com­
petition, and three years later the College at
Haileybury was closed. From time to time the
age limits for admission to the Service have varied.
They now are from twenty-two to twenty-four, and
every civil servant, as soon as he arrives in India,
127
 MODERN INDIA /^j

\ y J ! l l o -^0 clualify *n law anc^ languages before hepy^ 1

x •' eligible for promotion. It would be well if the
standard of linguistic acquirements could be raised,
for proficiency in that respect is of far greater
importance than in law, or indeed in any other
branch of the education of an Indian civilian.
O f the many Indian things misunderstood in
England one is the extent to which natives of India
participate in the administration. So much is said
about their aspirations to take part in the govern­
ment of their own country, that it will come as a
shock of surprise to many to learn that there are
only 1200 Englishmen engaged in civil govern­
ment, and, excluding 864 civil charges held by
members of the Indian Civil Service, there are
3700 persons holding posts in the judicial and
executive services, of whom no more than 100 are
Europeans.
Indeed, the well-known agitator, Babu Bepin
Chandra Pal, said, “ W e,” that is, the natives,
“ now govern India,” and if the words are added,
“ subject to the impartial supervision of the British,”
that is a true statement of the case. Natives of
India manage most of the business connected with
the collection of land revenue, .dispose of the vast
majority of magisterial cases, perform nearly all the
civil and judicial work of the Empire, and in some
departments, notably in that of the police, the per­
sonnel is almost entirely Indian.
\ ( ( W W T H E CIVIL SER V IC E ( q t
is, of course, true that the Indian Civil
vice proper, commonly called the Covenanted Civil
Service, is a corps d elite, staffed for the most part
by the governing race, and that the emoluments are
therefore pitched on a comparatively high scale,
though by no means too high when the importance
of the functions performed is remembered.
The Collector and Magistrate of a District is in
everything but the name a Governor, subject to the
control of the Governor in Council or Lieutenant-
Governor at headquarters. District judges exer­
cise powers of life and death, subject to appeal to
the High Court of the Province, and when it is
remembered that these officers only draw a salary
of something less than ^2000 a year, that they have
in the interests of the public to retire when they are
only in early middle age, lest they should deteriorate
by long residence in the tropics, and when it is re­
membered that climatic exigencies make it neces­
sary for them to maintain an establishment in
Europe and a home in India, it cannot fairly be
contended that they are overpaid.
The salary of natives of India serving in their
own country is on an entirely different footing,
though it is by no means the contention or inten­
tion of the reformers that smaller rates should be
accepted by natives of India in the interests of the
general taxpayer.
Just as in Russia the peasant’s pair of top-boots,
I
li( |o)i
7 $<3
< ^ )|n
MODERN INDIA
with flannel, for the winter, is an absolute
VflT
necessity of life, and costs no small part of what
would keep a family in the tropics for a year, so
the salary drawn by one British magistrate or judge
would suffice to keep three or four natives of India
occupying the same position.
Of course it is true that natives make an excel­
lent use of their salaries, and maintain their poor
relations in a manner which does them infinite
honour, and also maintain groups of dependants ;
but it is not necessary to the State that they should
become bountiful lords in their immediate circles, and
it would be fair enough if they received lower rates
than English officers for performing the like functions.
It has already been pointed out that, except in
England, there is no country, in Europe in which
the judicial and executive officers receive such high
salaries as are given in the superior ranks of the
native Civil Service of India.
Appointments made in India, carrying salaries of
^ 1 3 a month and upwards, are reserved for natives
of India, and selected natives are eligible for all
offices formerly reserved for members of the Indian
Civil Service, recruited at home and entered by
competitive examination.
The public service in India is divided into the
Indian Civil Service, just described, and the pro­
vincial or subordinate service recruited in India;
and the members of the provincial services enjoyjall
(if f \v THE CIVIL SERVICE IgT
, important executive and judicial and a d m in ls^
trative appointments which are not held by the
Indian Civil Service recruited at home. They are
also eligible, as has just been stated, for offices
reserved for the Indian Civil Service, that is for
natives of Europe.
No slight whatever is implied upon the capacity
and honesty of natives of India by reserving cer­
tain offices to the English. Indeed, it would be
idle to contend, and no one with knowledge of the
subject would contend, that men of the very highest
executive and judicial, particularly the latter, ability
have been and are being found amongst natives of
India. Indeed, no search is required to find them ;
but it is not too much to say that even in native
States ruling chiefs, with the full approval of their
subjects, resort to no inconsiderable extent to Euro­
pean assistance. The fact is the merits of the one
are complementary to those of the other, and inde­
pendent of their nationality. An entirely Indian
personnel not only does not find favour with the
masses, but meets with their active disapproval.
Two years ago, when certain Bengali Babus
were sowing sedition amongst the Hindus of the
Punjab, and seditious editors were being supported
by certain members of the British Parliament, the
Mahomedans in Ludhiana petitioned the Lieu­
tenant-Governor for the replacement of the Hindu
personnel of the administration by Europeans, and
j|( M a j l j MODERN INDIA \GT
of the towns which he visited he drove
through a triumphal arch bearing the legend, “ IHor
God’s sake save us from the rule of our fellow-
countrymen.” This is by no means an unusual
occurrence, and it should be understood in the sense
above suggested, and not as a wholesale condemna-
tion of the natives of India, or a wholesale eulogy
of the people of this country.
In the province of Bengal, the chief seat of the
seditious movement against British rule, and the
source whence misrepresentations of its character
chiefly proceed, though the agitators of Poona must
never be forgotten, there is no office which has not
been held, and may not be held again, by a native
of India, and since Lord Morley took over the reins
at the India Office, he has actually appointed a
Hindu and a Mahomedan gentleman to be mem­
bers of his own Council, and, in concert with Lord
Minto, has raised a capable Indian barrister to the
legal membership of the Governor-General’s Council,
to sit in the seat of Macaulay.
Of such high offices there are few for Euro­
pean or Indian, but such appointments as these are
merely representative of what occurs throughout
the Empire. There are, roughly speaking, nearly
30,000 Government posts in India, with salaries of
^ 5 a month and upwards, of which the Hindus
hold 50 per cent., the Mahomedans 8 per cent. ;
and, in the total tale of appointments, the number
 ■ ec%x
THE CIVIL s e r v i c e / p jT
Hindus has increased by 179, by M a K ^ L j
^ ^ Jfe d a n s 129, by Eurasians 106, and by Europeans
36 per cent, since 1867.
To more than half of all the appointments in
India a salary of .£ 13, or 200 rupees, a month or
less is attached. Of these posts, Europeans hold
less than 10 per cent. Of posts of Rs. 200 and 300
the Indian element has risen from 51 to 60 per
cent., and of posts from Rs. 300 to 400, from 23 to
43 per cent.; from Rs. 400 to 500 per month, from
21 to 40 per cent. ; in posts from Rs. 500 to 600,
from 9 to 25 per cent.; in posts from Rs. 600
to 700, from 15 to 27 per cent.; in posts from
Rs. 700 to 800, from 5 to 13 per cent. In appoint­
ments with pay from Rs. 800 to 1000 per month,
there are 93 natives of India, and in 1903, since
which date there has certainly been no decrease,
out of 1370 appointments with salaries of Rs. 1000
(£60) a month and upwards, 71 were filled by
Hindus and 21 by Mahomedans, giving a per­
centage of 7 for natives of India.
The fact is not denied that this latter class of
appointment at the highest rates of pay is gene­
rally filled by the British Civil Service, recruited in
England amongst men who have passed into the
Service, having received, for the most part, a public
school and university education. Long may they
continue, in the interests of India, to be the con­
trolling element in its Government, the reputation
 MODERN INDIA (q j
hich is chiefly due to their energy, honesty,
' efficiency.
T he aggregate pay of the total number of posts
has increased since 1867 by 91 per cent., but the
a&greg ate pay drawn by Europeans and Eurasians
has increased by 6, that of natives of India by 191,
and of Hindus by 204 per cent.
It is clear, therefore, that in the proportion of
posts occupied, and in the averages of pay drawn,
there has been a progressive increase in the Indian,
and a progressive decrease in the European element,
so that there is no justification for the-statements
put forward to the effect that the promises of Queen
Victoria’s proclamation have not been fulfilled.
The Government of India employs 6500 of our
own fellow-countrymen and 21,800 natives of India
to rule over 232,000,000 in British India, and to
assist the native princes in ruling over 62,461,000.
It would be very interesting to have the com­
parative figures of foreign Governments, for the
Dutch in Java, the French in Algeria and Cochin
China, and the Russians in Turkestan and in their
other Asian possessions. Unfortunately no com­
parative figures of this sort are available, and, day
by day, in the House of Commons, questions are
asked showing that the questioner is comparing,
and inviting the House to compare, the figures of
progress made in our Indian Empire with the cor­
responding figures for the British Isles, and, after
 the CIVIL SERVICE /p(
l^A l | ijA is natural in so far as regards questionq^X x
personal knowledge is confined, as is so often
the case, to their own country.
Critics of the Congress School, while urging
that the whole Government Service should be
staffed by natives of India, nevertheless exhibit
the profoundest distrust of, and the strongest
antipathy against, the one department of our
administration, which is almost exclusively native
in its composition. It is safe to say that through­
out the vast continent of India at the present
moment, if in any case the conduct of the police
can be impugned, the matter is dragged before Par­
liament ; and all prosecutions for sedition, all cases
of deportation, and all action taken under the lately
passed repressive legislation are criticised from the
same standpoint of utter distrust ot the police. Yet
these policemen are invariably natives of India, and
the critics are driven to the unworthy suggestion,
actually made in the House of Commons, that they
are suborned by European superiors to manufactuie
false evidence against their fellow - countrymen.
No one has yet been found to suggest that the
police in native States, also natives, are in any way
superior to the police in British India. Indeed,
last year, 1909, a case has occurred in one of the
best governed principalities in all India, one ire-
quently held up as a model to all others, 1 ravan. ore,
in which the High Court, consisting ol Indian and
/|/ MODERN INDIA IA j
Vj^v^^^ropean judges, has condemned the conduct;
the police as severely as the judges of the High
Court in Calcutta have done in. any of the cases
which have come before them.
Amongst the many functions of the Collector
Magistrate or Deputy Commissioner who is head
of a District, is the control of the police. It is true
that this duty is only one of many others connected
with the land and land revenue, with forests, public
works, gaols, sanitation, education, and District and
Municipal Boards ; but if, as the Congress critics
appear to think, the native of India is unfit to be
a police officer, how can he be fit to exercise these
manifold functions, requiring great physical strength
and endurance, habits of the utmost corporeal acti­
vity, and good horsemanship, as well as the control
of what is, according to their showing, a hopelessly
and unutterably corrupt police force.
The head of a District is assisted in his mani­
fold duties by subordinate civil officers, a super­
intendent of police, a doctor, a forest officer, a
surveyor, and various other functionaries. There
are also sub-District units, managed, as a rule, very
satisfactorily by native officers, whose charges may
vary in size between three and six hundred square
miles. Below them again are the village officers,
the Head Man, the Accountant, the Watchman,
and so on : and among the few intelligent criticisms
made by critics of the sentimental, Congress, and
\i(W W THE CIVIL SERVICE |^T
\V '^ ^ ^ n ced Indian schools in Parliament are t h o i? ^ “ ^
which relate to the maintenance, as far as possible
unimpaired, of these admirable village communes,
with which our British system of administration un­
fortunately seems necessarily to come into collision.
Of all the material with which the travelling mem­
ber is inoculated by those who dry-nurse him, this
is the only useful asset.
The judicial administration of an Indian pro­
vince consists of one High Court, the District and
Sessions Divisions Courts, the Courts of the Dis­
trict Magistrate and his assistants, and the Courts
of the subordinate magistrates, that is to say,
subordinate as regards powers, and subject more
completely to appeal, but not subordinate in respect
of the exercise of magisterial powers, wherein they
are as independent as any magistrate or judge in
India.
There are also the Civil Courts of the District
Moonsiffs and the Subordinate Judges, practically
almost always natives of India, and almost invari­
ably officers of very considerable judicial ability.
The writer who, amongst other duties, served in
the Registrar’s Office of a High Court, has always
believed that for the performance of these duties
natives of India are unrivalled. That is not to say,
however, that the natives, even where they have
the* completest confidence in their fellow-country­
men on the Bench, do not prefer, in fact they
 ■ Go$X
/SsShSx M O DERN IN D IA

•' & a W do prefer, to have their cases ju d g ed \®^ l

Europeans, though this does not necessarily imply
any doubt of the honesty of the Indian judge. It
implies, rather, a full consciousness of the exceed­
ing1o ogreat difficulties under which absolute impar-
#
tiality is maintained in a country in which caste is
all-powerful, and in which equality is a mere empty
word, exploited by agitators, but having no existence
in fact.
T he law administered is Hindu, founded on the
Institutes of Manu, Mahomedan, founded on the
Koran, and customary, far the greatest of the
three, but somewhat checked in its natural develop­
ment by our practice of codification, and by the
simultaneous introduction of case-made law. It
is well to remember that the Indian conception of
law js of a personal character, and when the English
brought their personal legal system into the three
Presidency towns of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta,
some curious anomalies resulted, such as, among
other things, the utterly incongruous office of
Sheriff, which survives to this day.
No Act of Parliament passed subsequently to
1726 applies, unless expressly stated, to British
India. E v ery Act passed by the Local Govern­
ment requires the consent of the Governor-General,
and may be disallowed by the Sovereign, and the
Legislative Council of the Governor-General has
no authority to repeal the Arm y Act, or any
l((w w THE CIVIL SERVICE
enactment enabling the Secretary of State to r a i i ? - ^
^Anbney in the United Kingdom.
In native States laws are passed by the ruling
Chief, in some cases aided by that British institu­
tion, a Legislative Council, and always with the
advice and approval of the political officer, repre­
senting the British Government, generally known
as the Resident. Certain rights are reserved to
the British Government, arising out of the fact that
for external purposes native States are regarded as
part of the British Empire.
On the Benches of the High Courts one-third
of the judges are by statute required to be barristers,
and every province is divided into Sessions D ivi­
sions, the judge of each of which has power of life
and death, subject to the confirmation of the Highest
Court of Criminal Appeal in the Province. Elabo­
rate appeals are provided from the courts of the
magistrates of different classes. Civil Courts of
grades below that of the District Judge are almost
entirely presided over by natives of India, who also
occupy, on an average, a dozen seats, at any given
time, on the benches of the High Courts from which
appeal lies in civil, and some criminal, cases to the
J udicial Committee of the Privy Council. The system
of combining, in the person of one functionary, the
offices of Collector of Revenue and District M agis­
trate has been subjected to a perfect storm of criticism
by the advanced Indians and by the Congress School,
 MODERN INDIA
\ \ J ^ i t u r a l l y disapprove of any measure te n d in g S tL i
increase the power and influence of District Officers.
But this system was no invention of the British.
It was inherited from our predecessors in title, and
is by no means unpopular with the masses, being in
strict accordance with native theories of govern­
ment, and not open to criticism from any point of
view but that of the advanced countries of Western
Europe, with which it is simply ridiculous to com­
pare India. T he District Magistrates, as a fact,
rarely try criminal cases, but it is their duty to
repress crime, and not merely to sit down and
wait for evidence, often of little value. Again, the
creation of stipendiary magistrates for the disposal
ot criminal cases, now tried by revenue officers,
would cost large sums of money, and would benefit
no one, except the Babus, who would obtain the new
appointments.
Natives of Europe and of India are subject to
the same civil and criminal jurisdiction, except that
European British subjects may only be arraigned
before a judge or a magistrate who is a Justice of the
Peace, and they can claim a jury, of which not less
than half the number are Europeans or Americans.
Those who remember the nearly successful
charge brought by some Bengalis against a E uro­
pean, who had been shooting near their village, and
reflect upon the ease with which a corpse can be
pi oduced, furnished with the necessary wounds,
/
 TH E CIVIL SERVICE / / fly
SSld t'he death laid at the door of a European, w h ? - ^
perhaps was merely defending himself against
attack, will appreciate the necessity for this pre­
caution in favour of the few white men in India.
Indian villages, which contain upwards of 70 per
cent, of the population of the continent, may be
divided into the joint or landlord village, which
prevails in the United Provinces, Central Provinces,
and the Punjab; and the ryotwari village, which
occurs outside Northern India, in which the
revenue is collected directly from the cultivator,
and in which there is no joint responsibility.
Under native rule no system of representation
ever grew up, and the management of towns and
villages alike resided, not in the hands of represen­
tatives of the people, but in those of the tax
collector, police officer, and other officials. The
exotic system of District Boards and Municipalities
was greatly developed by Lord Ripon, who ex­
tended the elective element in it, and regarded it
as a most valuable method of educating the peoples
of India up to political responsibility. It is not too
much to say that this system has never become
popular with the people, and that the only tax
levied by the Municipalities that is not absolutely
unpopular is one that we in this country regard with
particular disfavour, but which the precedent-loving
natives of India readily accept as the counterpart
of the obstructive but time-honoured transit duty,
tv S a MODERN INDIA m j
x ^ ^ ^ n ie ly , the octroi. Even in Madras, where
^tJovernm ent has been more successful, there is a
great deal of make believe about the whole business.
It was the duty of the writer at one time to ad­
minister certain Municipalities and Local Boards,
and at another to review their reports in the lump
in the Provincial Secretariat, and in spite of the
persistent eulogies which proceed from the party
of reform he can only record his opinion that the
system, as a whole, is unpopular and unsuccessful,
though it is, of course, immensely grateful to the
lawyer class, and has been the means whereby they
have consolidated their power, and their stepping-
stone to the Provincial and Supreme Legislative
Councils.
Lord Ripon regarded the elective system as a
means of political and popular education, and it
is no doubt regarded by the reformers as a most
valuable step on the road to those Parliamentary
institutions to the grant of which Lord Morley has
plainly stated he does not look forward, an im­
portant pronouncement from one who has made
so great a move forward in order to meet the
aspirations of the advanced party.
These views may be regarded as novel and
strange by those who have been in the habit of
reading the materia1 industriously circulated in this
country by the English Branch of the Indian Con­
gress, and this gives the writer the opportunity to
/* '' n
r .l i l ):) THE C IV IL S E R V IC E iV M .

state'm the plainest and most unequivocal language

that the British officer in India, at the present day,
can only get at the feelings of the masses, indeed,
can only come in contact with them, by breaking
loose from the net which is industriously weaved
around him, by having a perfect command of the
vernacular language of his District, and by keep­
ing in mind the inevitable attitude of the class,
conveniently known as Babus, who desire that he
should be their tool, and will not willingly suffer
him to be their master.
I P < S L

CHAPTER IX

EDUCATION

R eference has already been made to the recom­

mendations of the Decentralisation Commission in
respect of education, but in no work on India,
however biief and abstract in character, is it
possible to give this great factor in the present
condition of the Empire mere passing notice.
1 he battle of the Orientalists and the Anglicists
was fought in the days of Lord Macaulay, who was
held to have settled the question by his celebrated
Minute, which, however, is no more conclusive as an
argument than his history and essays are accurate
as to their facts.
E ver since that day, however, the Government
of India have continuously developed higher educa­
tion upon Western lines, until at the present time
graduates of the Universities are turned out by
thousands to enter the public service if they can,
and if they cannot, to join the ranks of the dis­
contented and the disaffected.
E very attempt to diminish the gratuitous
ctn ’ to a S reat extent unnecessarily gratuitous,
[1(9 )f EDUCATION IQ !
■ ; . provision of higher instruction, in order to increase
the provision of the more necessary, more useful,
and far more innocuous primary education has been
steadily resisted by the Brahmin and privileged
classes, who, thanks to this system, have been able
to maintain the position they occupied before our
supremacy, and practically to rule the country,
or to exercise their great influence in ruling it
as our agents, in every department of the public
service.
Pledged as the British Government wisely and
necessarily is to religious neutrality, it abstains in
Government-aided institutions from all religious
teaching, which is supposed to be supplied by the
parents of pupils in their homes. Such, however,
is not a feature of home life in India, and students
who are studying Western science and literature
are inevitably led to reject their own religious and
ethical systems without accepting ours in substitu­
tion therefor, or the general moral code which has
resulted from the profession for ages of the creed
of Christianity.
Hence the phenomenon of youths whose hatred
of the English increases in proportion to the extent
to which they imitate the habits, customs, and modes
of thought of our country, unless in addition to pro­
fiting by an almost gratuitous Western education,
they are also provided, whether or not qualified,
with an appointment under the State.
K
 MODERN INDIA fo T
\ X ® X j h e same ignorant criticism is applied to
spread of education in India as to everything else
connected with the administration of that country.
Ii only one-sixth of the boys of school-going age
were following a course of primary instruction at
last Census, instead of being astonished that an
Oriental population should exhibit such satisfactory
figures, comparisons are immediately made with
the number of boys of school-going age in England !
Does any one point out this obvious fact ? By no
means. The absurdly inappropriate standard seems
to meet with general acceptance.
Lord Curzon at any rate had the courage to
appoint the Indian Universities Commission, which
admitted that the acquirements of Indian graduates
were inadequate and superficial, and that the life
they led while undergoing instruction was undis­
ciplined and unsatisfactory, words even more appli­
cable to the lives which Indian students lead who
come over here to complete their education.
Again, with a true appreciation of the position,
Lord Curzon s Government increased the grants
for primary schools, laid down tests for the official
recognition oi secondary education, and introduced
important ana real reforms into the training colleges
and industrial schools.
Finuing that the five Indian Universities con­
trolled the instruction given in about 200 colleges,
wh!_u were practically under no inspection, and
 EDUCATION I' f n T
V ^ ^ ^ e c t to no uniform standards, Lord C u rz o irjp X j
Government also provided these Universities with
new and better Senates, in order that they might
insist upon superior standards being maintained
in affiliated and recognised institutions. O f course
those who profit by B.A . making, and the class
so made, at once objected that the policy of
the Government of India was to insist upon such
a high standard of efficiency as would crush the
less satisfactory institutions, which the Babus had
found so useful in the manufacture of graduates,
and the seven vials of wrath were emptied upon the
head of Lord Curzon, as the chief of, and also as the
chief factor in, his own Government. None the
less were these reforms as necessary to introduce as
they were difficult of introduction, and the courage
of the Viceroy and his colleagues, who cannot have
been ignorant of what their reception would be at
the hands of the Bengali press, deserve, and should
receive, recognition.
Again, while it is true that only half the boys of
school-going age were following a course of primary
education when the last Census was taken, it is
extremely improbable that in any other part of Asia
anything approaching that number has been ever
attained, or in any Oriental country under European
control.
Secondary education is far more developed, but
it is a serious flaw in the system that in this grade
 • eoiJJS.

MODERN INDIA
N ^ g fc ^ v e r n a c u la r languages are utterly sacrificeJ-W-^
-English, the study of which among impecunious
students seems to provoke animosity against the
nation which speaks that tongue, only equalled
by the intensity of the ardour with which it is
pursued.
Education amongst the Mahomedans has made
less progress, and though technical, industrial, arts,
engineering, medical, agricultural, veterinary, and
normal colleges and schools find a place in the
Indian system of public instruction, it may safely be
asserted that its chief product is the typical Babu,
the grascuius esuriens of the Indian Empire.
Lord Curzon, like the Chinese coolie, if the com­
parison be permitted for a moment, was condemned
more because of his merits than his faults, and
though by no means more unappreciative of
popularity than other public men, he had the
courage nevertheless to tell the truth and say that
the vernacular languages were being neglected for
the pursuit of English on account of the mercan­
tile value of the latter tongue. Nor should it be
forgotten that it was his Government which made
primary education a charge on the provincial
revenues, and supplemented these charges by
annual grants, and that it was he who ventured to
say that our higher education trained the memory
at he expense of the mind, who restored the
training colleges and endeavoured to make the
 m T EDUCATION
WS^ataps^rsities the abodes of learning instead of t^re^^
~~~manufactories of graduates. If he did not wholly
succeed where success was so difficult, there is
at any rate no proof at all that the reconstructed
Senates have dealt severely with the weaker
colleges, and there is no doubt that they have
done something to bring these very unsatisfactory
institutions into line.
The fact is the problem of education in India is
difficult and complex to an almost inconceivable
degree. The numbers affected, the differences in
religion, race, creed, languages and customs, re­
semble those of a quarter of the globe rather than
of any one country, which ignorant critics in
England suppose, or pretend to believe, India
to be. Government employment is beyond all
others the goal to which higher education points,
and though want of reverence and an impatience of
control have manifested themselves to an alarming
extent amongst the products of our system, it is
the fact that this result is by no means peculiar to
it, but has occurred whenever an ancient ethical
system has had to give way to new sources of
knowledge and fresh modes of thought. No doubt,
however, the exclusively material character of the
instruction given in Indian educational institutions
has increased this unsatisfactory feature to an extent
unprecedented in other countries in which religion
plays a less important part, and is less essential as
 MODERN INDIA
cement of the whole social system. Of comjj^jT i
something is done to counteract the solvent effects
of our education, and the Government of India has
been at infinite pains in selecting text-books, in
providing hostels and making physical training
compulsory as far as possible upon unwilling youths
of sedentary habits. Every Local Government
impresses upon those engaged in tuition the
necessity for enforcing discipline and developing
the moral training of their pupils.
Nevertheless great difficulty is experienced in
enforcing discipline, and a simple illustration of this
is afforded by the fact that large numbers of the
boys at school are married men, and that they and
their relations would strongly object to the infliction
of corporal punishment, no matter how serious the
offence committed.
As to text-books where so many languages
are spoken, unusual difficulty attaches to providing
suitable books, and so long as an unscrupulous,
hostile, and licentious vernacular press circulates
freely amongst the rising generation, there is too
much ground to fear that moral essays will be of
little or no avail in counteracting so active and
malevolent a propagandist movement.
One reform in the educational system cries
aloud for adoption, namely, the systematic refuta­
tion of the calumnies which are circulated broadcast
concerning our Government in India. It is not
( i f f ? Y f' EDUCATION (q I
to rest content with the consciousnessHoi^
'good work done. It is, on the contrary, necessary
to strain every nerve to prevent malicious represen­
tation of that work from gaining considerable, if not
general, acceptance.
Only those who have spent years in England
in the endeavour to make the truth known, and
to counteract poisonous propaganda, have any
idea of the extent to wrhich systematic misrepre­
sentation of the Government is carried on amongst
the lower - middle and lower classes of Great
Britain.
Unfortunately there is a small band in Parlia­
ment of whom it might be said, malitia supplet
numeros, whose action enormously strengthens
the hands of the enemies of our country, and
whose members are always ready to join in any
attack, from whatsoever quarter proceeding, pro­
vided only it be directed against their own fellow-
countrymen.
No system of education in India, therefore, can
be complete or satisfactory which does not include
systematic training as to the facts, and systematic
refutation of the false, foolish, and mischievous
statements which are sown broadcast in Europe,
Asia, and America by the enemies of British rule.
Here as elsewhere appears the craft and subtlety
of the agitator, and the ignorance and gullibility
of his dupe, for no apparent reason exists why
 ' Go^ X

MODERN INDIA
•V- H$e general taxpayer in India should be ch a rg eJlL j
with the lion’s share of the cost of making gra­
duates, seeing that the graduate, when made,
wishes to live upon, not for, the general taxpayer.
Nevertheless the so-called “ friends of India” in
Parliament blindly back the classes against the
masses, and imagine they are working on demo­
cratic lines.
Under the old Hindu system, higher education
was practically confined to the higher classes, and
there is no doubt but that, by continuing to gratui­
tously provide such higher education, the British
in India have confirmed to the Brahmin, and allied
higher castes, that position of supremacy which
they held prior to our rule as the nominal agents,
but as the real masters, of the turbulent, bold, and
superstitious military tribes, who imposed their yoke
on different parts of the continent. Thus wrote
Sir John Malcolm, who knew this subject about
which Macaulay and his school theorised, just as
the million who can speak English pretend at the
present day to represent the 299 millions who
cannot, while the 299 millions ignore the one
million, who, nevertheless, in many quarters appear
to be accepted as their representatives.
The Government of India has taken certain
steps to exercise control over the students and
schoolboys, and Lord Morley has elaborated a most
useful scheme for their protection here in England
 EDUCATION Q y
the.contamination of India House, H ig h g k tll^
and the like plague-spots, in which visionary,
emotional youths of immature minds and deficient
knowledge are turned into assassins.
Of all the wants of Indian education, denomi­
national teaching is the greatest. Whenever the
people take independent action, as in the case of
the Mahomedan Anglo-Oriental College of Alighur,
the Central Hindu College at Benares, the Khalsa
College of the Sikhs, and the Arya-Vedic and
Islamic Colleges of the Punjab, it will be found
that they always build upon religious lines. The
best text-books cannot supply this one crying need,
but if we arranged that all students should receive
denominational teaching in the religion of their
parents, taught history in comparative fashion as
it should be taught, and inculcated the true facts
about our own Government, great strides towards
the attainment of a more practical and satisfactory
system would be effected.
We now spend all our funds devoted to educa­
tion in gilding the lily, and still further educating
the Brahmins, who are too often hostile to our­
selves, instead of providing a modicum of know­
ledge for the masses, who are invariably well
affected.
Another important reform is to insist upon the
acquisition by every European executive official
of the chief vernacular languages of his District,
n S y " MODERN INDIA
which he is no better than the tool o f4 fr^ ^
^Am bordinates, and can never properly exercise the
extensive powers with which he is entrusted.
It is folly to regard the graduates as a negligible
quantity, though it may be true, as the Superin­
tendent of Municipal Schools in Bombay lately
said, that they do not command much influence
amongst the masses of their fellow-countrymen and
do not represent them. The graduate is, in fact,
a permanent feature in the situation, and since no
one is likely to recommend that he should be
ended, every one should unite in agreeing that he
should be mended, and that the practice of turning
out half-educated specimens wholesale at a cost of
£o to £ 6 a head to the general taxpayer should
be definitely abandoned.
The number of students who matriculated at
the Universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, the
Punjab, and Allahabad in 1906—7 was 9177. The
figure has year by year been steadily increasing,
and there were in 1907 no less than 5,397,862
students, male and female, in 162,690 educational
institutions, of which 28,944 were public, 75,624
aided, and 58,189 private and unaided. These
figures indicate great educational activity, and if
only 25.4 per cent, of boys and 3.4 per cent, of
girls of a school-going age are at school, it would
be interesting to compare these figures with those
of any other part of Asia, and as the Master of
/ & '% \ ^
if W ) i \ education (A j 5
X ^ v ^ ^ ^ a n k recently stated in a speech which attr^rctecH
ttitjch attention, statistics show that if the people as
a whole are still illiterate, they can by no means be
described as more prone to crime than the inhabi­
tants of other countries.
ml §l
CH APTER X
P R E S E N T P O L IT IC A L C O N D ITIO N S—S E D IT IO N —P A R ­
T IT IO N —S V A D E S H I —S V A R A J—BOYCOTT—P R E S S

No one who has studied even in the most super­

ficial manner the educational system in force in
India will hesitate to say that that system, interact­
ing with, and reacting upon, the present ferment in
the East, is the chief cause of that condition of
affairs which in recent years has become manifest
in the country, and is commonly called unrest.
It is not too much to say that students are
brought up on literature full of destructive criticism
of any form of government founded on authority.
The gods of the East are held up either to scorn
or good-humoured contempt, while the gods of the
West are not represented as specially worthy of
reverence or obedience.
Another contributory cause of a far less im­
portant character but still of considerable im­
portance is the want of sufficiently whole-hearted
support of the police force, whose, no doubt, many
and great faults, characteristic as they are of the
Indian race to which the members of the force
belong, have been, and are being exaggerated, for
156
 PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS
\. V | | h J p'urpose of making a trick in the game of c|y| J 1
affection, a trick which the Government is perhaps
rather too willing to allow to be marked. The
actions, writings, and speeches of a little band of
retired Indian civil servants, and of certain senti­
mental Radicals, Labour members, and the like
in Parliament, the activities of Anarchists and
their dupes in and out of England and India,
the support of certain Irish journals, the effect
of active and continued propagandist efforts in
Bengal and the Punjab, and in the Mahratta
country, the subtle influence of certain half­
religious and half-political bodies in Bengal and
the United Provinces, the use made of the
administrative division of the old over-large
province of Bengal, the pecuniary support given
by Bengal landlords to the Congress funds under
the mistaken impression that they are thereby
insuring the continuance of the permanent settle­
ment with which the Government has never
thought of interfering, the debauching of Indian
students in England, to which Lord Morley is
endeavouring to put an end, the presence of sedi­
tious associations at our Universities, the judgment
of the High Court of Calcutta in the Blomfield
case, the erroneous and mischievous definition given
in the same Court of the word svaraj, which, as
all the judges should know, implies independence,
the defeat of a first-class European Power by
 MODERN INDIA fn y
and last, but by no means least, t m L j
activity of the seditious Press and the reluctance of
Government until lately to prosecute the editors—
all these are among the causes of the movement
known as “ unrest.” It is a movement which,
though not affecting the masses, is sufficiently
widespread amongst the English-educated classes
to make it one of the most formidable difficulties
with which the Government of India has at
present, and will have in the future, to deal.
Mercifully, the occasion finds the man in the
present Secretary of State for India, Lord Morley,
who, without departing from the policy of con­
ciliation, in which direction indeed he has made
further advances in order to meet the legitimate
aspirations of the English-educated upper classes,
has nevertheless dealt firmly with all breaches of
the law, and supported the Government of India
in every step it has taken to this end, if, indeed,
he has not inspired some of these steps by his
own initiative and advice. The respective shares,
however, of Secretary of State and Viceroy in
the acts of the Government of India are never
known outside their respective offices, and those
without these inner circles can only draw con­
clusions from the personal qualities of the high
officers concerned.
The so-called partition of Bengal was merely
an opportunity of focusing and concentrating the
/ {{ ♦ Y|i PRESENT p o l it ic a l c o n d it io n s (gT
of sedition and unrest, and the o p p o sitib n ^
originated with the Babu class, the members of
which naturally desired to retain the monopoly
of Government appointments, which they had
hitherto enjoyed in the undivided province of
Bengal, and disliked the prospect of being the
majority in one out of two Bengal provinces,
instead of being the majority in one undivided
province.
It is the Babu class which controls the Indian
Press, which invented Svadeshi, or the exclusive
use of home produce, and the Svaraj, or political
independence, movements.
The policy of Svadeshi, in spite of the des­
perate efforts of the Congress and Babu party,
is failing, owing to the unwillingness of the
people to buy at greater cost goods made in
India, which they can obtain at a cheaper rate
from iiurope, and it is astonishing how members
of Parliament elected as strong, not to say
violent, free traders in England, can with any
approach to consistency support a full-blown pro­
tectionist policy, of which the refusal to admit
into India, British steel, cotton, and other goods,
is the cardinal feature.
As to Svaraj, its advocates pretend, when
necessary, that it is the equivalent of colonial
self-government, as if that were possible with
300 million Asiatics to govern, but it should
 / X o*6 ■

(*( J j j i i f ! MODERN INDIA V fiT

X^ be clearly understood that all the Svaraj faction
want from England is the British army, at the
cost of the taxpayer at home, to maintain the
Brahmin and Babu class in authority over the ,
masses, which in fact they now rule with, but
desire to rule without, the supervision of the
Englishman.
It may be argued from a European standpoint
that the most intelligent and highly-educated
classes should rule over the masses, but such
classes never have so ruled in the East unless
they were able to maintain themselves in power
by other qualities than brains, and the Babu
class notoriously cannot do so, neither has it
ever yet been shown that the intelligent and
highly-educated classes of one nationality can
continue to rule with the aid of foreign bayonets
over the masses not only of their owm but of
other nations. To draw a European parallel is
impossible; but could the upper classes of
Dresden, or say. of all Saxony, have been main­
tained as rulers of Prussia, Bavaria, and other
countries in the German Empire with the help
of bayonets supplied by France, supposing that
France had conquered Prussia in the war?
To show how completely anti-British the Svaraj
and boycott movements are it will suffice to quote
one passage from the Sanjibani, edited by Krishna
Kumar Mitra, who was deported with eight other
(fW % PRESENT POLITICAL c o n d it io n s CAj
f i v ^ b ^ t o r s from Bengal in December 1908.

“ Oh brothers, we will not pollute our hands

by touching English goods. Let English goods
rot in the warehouse and be eaten bv white
ants and rats.”
The watchword of these agitators is “ Bande
Mataram, the name also of a newspaper, formerly
at any rate, managed or edited by Babu Bepin
Chandra Pal, whose voice was lately uplifted in
London. The words mean “ Hail Mother,” and
though they may now be used to mean “ Hail
Motherland,” the literal translation is simply “ Hail
Mother, that is, Mother Kali, and they are thus
a direct appeal to the lowest instincts of Hinduism
in its worst and most demoralising form.
The daughter of the deported Krishna Kumar
Mitra has lately published a little book called “ The
Sikh’s Sacrifice,” of which Babu Surendra Nath
Banerji wrote in his newspaper The Bengali:—
“ This little book reveals the process of nation
building through the ordeal of fire and persecu­
tion, and it should be in the hands of every one
who has his eyes open to the significance of the
events which are passing around us.”
f his journal, The Bengali, has been at least as
instrumental as any other in inflaming students in
Bengal to acts of violence. It is well described
by The Statesman of Calcutta, a journal under
L
( if W o i r MODERN INDIA fn y
j^ ^ |» fc 6 p e a n management, and itself a strong adherduVLj
to the reform movement, as one which, professing
horror of assassination, serves up every day for the
consumption of its readers vilification of the British
officials, insinuations against the actions of the ad­
ministration, and inculcates the notion that, the
Government being alien, cannot be expected to
understand, or sympathise with, the aspirations of
the people.”
The wish that “ The Sikh’s Sacrifice” should be
in the hands of every schoolboy has been pretty well
realised, for it was the text-book of the Anushilan
Samiti, one of those associations to suppress which
the Government of India has taken special powers,
and both of the leaders of which are among the nine
deportees of December 1908.
The record of this Samiti is one stabbing and
one murder in 1907, a robbery with several murders
in 1908, and the murder of an informer’s brother in
1909.
Those who maintain that the agitation in Bengal
can be regarded as innocent should see the pictures
of Mother Kali, Kali Ma, the Ma of Bande Mataram,
the favourite deity of Bengal, more particularly
amongst the Hindu revolutionaries, who in their
conflict with the English demons appeal to Kali
for some of the mighty strength she displayed in
destroying the devils of old times.
The goddess is represented with a body of
 | p RESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS f e j
J hue, with a string of lately severed
heads, arms, and other limbs round her neck, a
sword dripping with gore in her bloodstained
hands, trampling on a giant now always repre­
sented as white, while other Hindu gods look
down approvingly from heaven on the prowess
of their sister.
The revolutionaries and anarchists of India are
now nothing if not religious. Early in the day they
discovered that the anti-Hindu attitude did not pay,
and though generally men who have renounced
Hindu caste and creed, they appeal through religion
to the most debased and degraded instincts of their
fellow-countrymen.
The picture of Kali just described is regarded
as equivalent to an idol, a vow taken upon it is
held sacred and binding, and such were the vows of
the members of the Anushilan Samiti. The words
run as follows :—

“ In the name of God, father, mother, preceptor, leader, and

mother country, I make this solemn vow that I will not be bound
by any tie from father, mother, relatives, kinsmen, friends, hearth,
home, till the mission of this Samiti is fulfilled, that I will not
hesitate to make any sacrifice in the discharge of the work of this
Samiti, I f I flinch from this solemn vow, or in any way act
contrary to this vow, the curse of God, of Kali Ma, and the
mighty sages will destroy me ere long.”

One of the revolutionary hymns to Kali contains

the following stanzas :—-
(if MODERN INDIA ( g j
\ & N ^ i^ m ie r e are you, oh ! mother Chamunda, wearing a g arlak d M ^
human heads,
Oh ! mother of terrible form, your afflicted children call you,
Devils are oppressing them, Demons have reduced India to
ashes,
Committing terrible oppression on her. Come, oh Chandi !
to punish Chanda and Munda in a different age.”

That is to say, Come to punish the English devils

who now oppress us in the place of those whom for­
merly you slew. Another hymn recites the mani­
festation of K ali’s power at the time of the Mutiny,
and prays that a similar time under new leaders may
soon recur. Here are a few stanzas :—
“ Half a century ago, all the children of India once made a
solemn vow.
“ Alas ! these efforts went for nothing, evil was brought about,
and the welfare of the country was not achieved.
“ Lakshmi Bai from Jhansi (Rani of Jhansi), Tantia from
Malwa (Tantia Topi), Nana Sahib Singh from Bithore (Nana
Sahib) rose roaring to remove the bondage of the Mother.
“ To-day Bepin Chandra Pal, Surendra Nath Banerji, and
Tilak Singh of the Mahrattas, have proclaimed that Agit Singh is
making arrangements in the Punjaub, and that the religious rites
of the mother (Kali) will be duly performed this time. Let Asia
rise up now with prowess, rise Herat and Meerut, why do you
not redden Kali Ghaut (the temple of Kali at Calcutta) with
blood and perform the worship of the Mother.”

It is hardly necessary to say that the names

mentioned are those of the bitterest enemies of the
English during the Mutiny, and of the leaders of
the anti-English agitation amongst the Bengalis
and Mahrattas of to-day.
 PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS V & I
;n other Bengali newspapers which are con­
trolled by political agitators, who also organise the
anti-partition, Svaraj, and Swadeshi movements,
men whose natural desire it is to concentrate their
interests at Calcutta, stories have been circulated to
tne effect that the object of the administrative re­
arrangement of Bengal was the raising of taxation,
the deportation of coolies, and other vain imaginings,
and throughout the Bar Libraries in Bengal circulars
were distributed describing the English as blood-
suckers, and calling upon Hindus to unite in the
name of Kali.
Nevertheless, in spite of all efforts, the boycott
and national volunteer movements have failed in
Eastern Bengal to do more than produce a feeling
of unrest, and to undermine discipline in the ranks
of the students.
Habitual misrepresentations are made in and
out of Parliament regarding the attitude of the
people of Eastern Bengal. The Mahomedans,
two-thirds of the whole, as a fact strongly approve
the creation of the new Province, in which they are
m the majority. Nor are they alone, for the Hindu
tenants of the Babu pleaders and landlords rejoice
at the closer supervision of their landlord’s pro­
ceedings, which will result from the levelling up of
the administration.
, But here again the astute agitators have duped
their English sympathisers into the belief that the
 MODERN INDIA
j \ V p a r t i t i o n movement is one of a democr^tre^
^ ch aracter, and that there is no organisation having
assassination as at least one of its aims. What then
is to be thought of the long list of concerted outrages
ending in the murder in London of Sir W. Curzon
Wyllie and Dr. Lalcaca ? What of the shooting of
Mr. Allen, two attempts on Sir A. Fraser, the
murder of two ladies at Mozufferpore, the bomb
factory at Manicktollah, the assassinations of
Narendro Nath Gossain the informer, of Nundo
Lai Bannerjee the detective, and of Asutosh Biswas
the Public Prosecutor, the bomb outrage on the
Eastern Bengal Railway, the riots in Bombay and
Rawalpindi, the bomb despatched in a book to
Mr. Kingsford the magistrate, and the repeated
attempts on the life of Mr. Hume, Public Pro­
secutor ? Were all these occurrences merely
fortuitous and unconnected, was there no common
knowledge and design ? That at any rate is not the
view taken in England of the long list of outrages
which culminated in the murder of Curzon Wyllie,
and have been followed by the attempt on the
Viceroy, and the assassination of Mr. Jackson.
The circumstances of the last-mentioned crime
prove the existence of a murder organisation
among high-caste Brahmins in the Deccan, to
cope with which the Government applied to the
Bombay Presidency the Criminal Law Amendment
Act, 1908, which shortens the trials of political
r( S ^PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS
and authorises the suppression of u ^
lawful associations. This step has been welcomed
by all but the small class of seditious agitators and
their dupes.
Babu Bepin Chandra Pal, who seconded a motion
of condolence with Lady W yllie in London in 1909,
no longer back than in 1907 referred to the neces­
sity for the sacrifice of 10 1 white goats, a speech
which, if innocent in intention, was at least very
unfortunate in expression, and capable of a most
sinister interpretation.
Mr. Bepin Chandra is, however, an able and
outspoken agitator, and he has admitted, what
should be obvious, that there can be no constitutional
agitation in India against the British Government,
besides which he made the useful admission that
it is the natives who now govern India, the
English only standing at the top and taking the
largest pay, a fair answer to those who say that
the natives have no share in the government of
their country. Bepin Chandra Pal went on to say
that the British incubus once removed, a prohibition
tariff would be imposed on the manufactures of
Sheffield and Manchester, when English trade
would soon be a thing of the past. Then English­
men would be refused admittance to India and
British capital would be rejected. If revolution
in India were permitted to be peaceful the United
States of India would be evolved, and the protection
r( MODERN INDIA V fiT
of Britain would be continued until a conflict arose,
when if a dictator were needed the Ameer of
Afghanistan was a capable man, who had lately
paid a visit to India!
But in England butter would not melt in Babu
Bepin Chandra’s mouth. Rightly did Sir John
. iewett treat his council to a homily in which he
dryly remarked that to express horror of assassina­
tion was not enough, and that cordial co-operation
with the Government in suppressing sedition and
punishing crime was the necessity of the day and
hour.
Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., has much resented
accusations that he was occupied in encouraging
sedition when he visited India in 1907, and of
course it may be that a little book he has published
this year called “ India” is intended to assist his
fellow-countrymen in governing the Empire of that
name.
Nevertheless it gives an account of our rule
which, were it founded on fact, would justify revolt,
and, if anything can, would almost palliate assassi­
nation, the occurrence of which in the heart of
London has at last compelled public opinion in
this country to give a passing thought to the dis­
loyal agitation which has long been proceeding in
India, almost unnoticed at home.
It may suffice here to remark that this little
book, published by the Independent Labour Party,
/ ^ t RESENT P0LITICAL CONDITIONS iff*
• i ^ t compendium of all the stock, stale, false, mpfyl 1
oftrrefuted criticisms of British rule put about by
the enemies of England amongst the Congress
party, the seditious classes in Bengal, and disaffected
Mahrattas of Poona.
The British Government !s accused of showing
special favour to Mahomedans, who, left alone, get
on well, it is said, with the Hindus, of extracting
from the peasants 75 per cent, of the harvest, which
is as near as may be just ten times the true figure,
of wringing the last penny from the cruelly over­
taxed peasants, and keeping them in a condition of
perpetual, hopeless, grinding poverty, in such a
state of absolute destitution as is probably not to be
equalled in any other country in the world.
It is really no excuse for such writings that the
author knows nothing of the other countries of the
world, and that he is only saying that which has
been imparted to him from interested sources. The
point is that the Socialists of England offer to join
hands with the revolutionaries of India, and at
the same time ex-officials in Parliament, of whom
Sir Henry Cotton may be taken as an example,
indulge in incessant denunciation of the British
Indian Government.
Sir H. Cotton published a book in 1907 describ­
ing our rule as “ suited to a slavish and ignoble
population,” saying that “ the principal object of
the Indian Government should be to apply itself
|7 W i M MODERN INDIA \O T
\ ^ 7 J p ^ e peaceful reconstruction of an Indian adminis­
tration in its place,” and recommending “ the with­
drawal of military support from England, which
would not be injurious to Anglo-Indians, because
they would in that case be constrained in their own
interests to adopt a more conciliatory demeanour
towards the people of the country ” !
Such writings as these inevitably fan the flame
of sedition, whatever be the intention of their authors,
who simply dance to the tune called by the Congress
representatives of the upper, aristocratic, and legal
classes, who are financed by the landlords, to pro­
tect whose tenants the British Indian Government
has had to pass repeated, tenancy Acts.
So little solidarity is there between those who
finance the agitators, and those whom the agitators
pretend to represent.
In fact, a class is growing up which is wholly out
of sympathy alike with natives of India and natives
of Europe. It is from an Indian journal that
the following words are quoted : “ The spirit of
rationalism and criticism evoked by occidental lore
has undermined the foundations of Aryan faith and
religion.”
This is the simple truth, but agitators find that
openly expressed contempt for the religion and
customs of India cuts them off from the masses, and
now the curious spectacle presents itself of England-
visiting, caste-renouncing Bengalis denouncing the
 PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS to n y
V ^ vSi^ u fities of sugar-refining and cotton-sizing
^^practised by the English for the destruction of the
sacred caste of the Hindu purchaser!
It must not for a moment be supposed that the
whole vernacular press is disaffected. Indeed most
of the journals in other than Bengali and Deccani
hands, the Parsee and Mahomedan newspapers, for
instance, are distinctly loyal, and there are still
many Hindu issues of which as much may be said.
1 he Parsees, as practical people, dread the results
of the agitation, and will have nothing to do with
the Bengali, in whom they have no confidence, and
for whose business capacity they entertain the pro-
foundest contempt.
The Parsee press also denounces those English
newspapers which vilify the British in India, and
wisely dwells upon the infinite mischief done by
encouraging the impression that a Liberal Govern­
ment will regard any agitation as an expression of
public feeling, and will yield to any demands, how­
ever unreasonable. Lord Morley has done more
than any other man to destroy this disastrous
illusion.
The Mahratta press, which is for the most part
under Brahmin management, is violently anti-
British, and its controllers belong to the same class
as the disaffected in Bengal— namely, landlords,
lawyers, money-lenders, priests, and clerks in the
Government service. The hostile Brahmins of

r
r ( |H 7 r MODERN INDIA ( g j
A K ^pP^na are not Mahrattas, except in the sense uraC^
tHey live in the Mahratta country, and they repre­
sent nothing but their own caste, the most exclu­
sive and aristocratic in the world, and, it may be
added, possessed of marvellous capacity for intrigue,
and of such subtle skill as has enabled them to per­
suade the Democrats and Socialists of England to
join hands with them against the masses of their
fellow-countrymen.
In Madras the agitation failed to produce much
impression on press or public, but the press of
Bengal and Poona, and to a less degree that of
Bombay and the Punjab, has been one of the chief
factors, and, after education, the chief factor, in
bringing about the present seditious movement.
It is natural to dwell upon this aspect of affairs
in India, but the loyal support which the Govern­
ment receives attracts less attention. Not only the
Mahomedans of Eastern Bengal, two-thirds of the
whole population, but also the Hindu tenants, have
made a protest, not against the partition, but against
the agitation against the partition, and against the
boycott, which the agitators endeavour to enforce,
to the great inconvenience of the people.
Repeated resolutions condemning the anti-British
agitation have been passed at meetings in Bengal
and Oudh, and individual Maharajas and Na-
wabs have rebuked individual agitators, Indian and
English.
If RESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS
W v S ^ i i l i n g princes have come to the aid of ttSLLj
Government by proclamations, by letters to the
Times, and by action taken in their own States, and
have pointed out what every one knows in India,
and no one grasps in England, that the acts of the
Bengali agitators are in no sense those of the
Indian peoples. T he greatest of Indian princes
have, moreover, denied that the Government of
India and its servants are unsympathetic. In a
sense they are, no doubt, because perfect impartiality
among many peoples of different creeds does not
allow of sympathy with one, when such, as is usually
the case, connotes antipathy against another, class.
T he Indian National Congress, which is Hindu,
but is not national— for in India are many nations,
most of which take no interest in its proceedings—
has undergone a series of shocks in recent years.
For two decades it pursued a quiet and unevent­
ful career, annually passing the same resolutions,
some of which were wise, and none of which could
be fairly described as seditious.
It was subsequently rent asunder by schisms
amongst its members, and became divided into two
parties, the Moderates and Extremists, or National­
ists, as they now call themselves, in imitation of
the Irish party in Parliament.
T he more moderate men, under the leadership
of Mr. Gokhale, were afraid of the attitude taken
up by Mr. Tilak and Babu Bepin Chandra Pal,
- ’ G°S *X ------------------------ ---------------

((( ^ ijm . MODERN INDIA VST I

both of whom have made acquaintance with the
inside of the gaol in India in the last two or three
■
years.
It is admitted that the Congress organisation
consists of the “ English educated middle classes,”
and, to make it national, the zemindars, merchants,
and cultivators would have to be represented in its
ranks, as well as the Mahomedans, who hold entirely
aloof.
Such as it is, however, it must be regarded as
committed to defiance of the law, since it declared
boycott to be a legitimate weapon, and it is itself
one of the causes and one of the effects of the
agitation.
It is easier to describe the causes of unrest than
to prescribe a remedy, but Parliament, in passing in
1909 the Indian Councils Act, introduced by Lord
Morley, has taken, on the advice of that statesman,
the best means available, under present circum­
stances, of dealing with so difficult a situation.
It must be admitted that it is impossible to
actively engage in educating your subjects to be­
lieve that a certain form of government is good
everywhere, in fact the only good form of govern­
ment, and then to tell them it is good everywhere
except in India, as soon as they ask for its applica­
tion in their own case.
This Act, which will be more fully described
elsewhere, goes quite as far as is safe in meeting
 RESENT POLITICAL CONDITIONS i/£ j
\ ^ ,\jlf^ ^ itim a te aspirations of the English-educatepy 1 j
5
x:' :da^es, and had not Lord Morley possessed, to an
unprecedented extent, the confidence of both great
parties in the State, it would not have been possible
to get through both Houses a measure so favourable
to the views of the advanced party. ■
The fact has to be acknowledged that an aristo­
cratic basis of government is natural to the peoples
of India, that the masses hold their hereditary leaders
in reverence, and that we should spare no pains to
obtain the help of these leaders. We .should, with
their aid, develop indigenous institutions, as indeed
the Decentralisation Commission has recommended,
and as the Indian Councils Act recognised ; for the
fact is that our legal tribunals act as promoters of
litigation, and are a solvent of all that is best and
most solid in the framework of Indian society.
Happily decentralisation is just now in the air. It
is favoured at the India Office, and there can hardly
be too much of it, if applied with discretion.
The separation of administrative and judicial
functions is merely pressed by agitators because
it will destroy the all-important influence of the
District Officer, whose position should be im­
proved and not impaired, if we are to continue to
rule India.
The danger of alienating the Mahomedans, by
yielding too far to the demands of the Brahmins
and Babus, must never be forgotten; nor the fact
f l( W 17JJ MODERN INDIA V ST
Orientals do not believe in the existence 01
power that is not exercised, and cannot realise that
a Government which permits a seditious press to
pelt it with mud, can prevent the unedifying spec­
tacle. It cannot, however, be alleged that for the
last three years the Government has not taken
action in this behalf, though probably such had
been rather long delayed, and just now an Act
has been passed by the Legislative Council of the
Governor-General providing a new summary pro­
cess for suppressing newspapers which encourage
sedition, suborn assassination, and excite hatred
against the Government.
Finally, the recognition of loyalists, even more
than the conciliation of the disaffected, should be
the care of a Government consisting of a few, set
aloft among millions of aliens. Nowhere in the
world are examples more effective than in such a
setting.

II

I
Is I <SL
CH APTER XI

R E F O R M S —I N D IA N C O U N C IL S A C T

It is very generally held, and the writer of these

pages holds, that India is unfitted for democratic
representative government by reason of its anta­
gonism of interests, creeds, classes, and nationalities,
its want of education, its caste system, its indiffer­
ence to progress after the approved Western pattern,
and its traditional and historical predilections. A
class, however, has arisen which, taught by our­
selves that political freedom and representative in­
stitutions are the birthright of every man, and the
goal which all should strive to attain, refuses to
regard such instruction as academic, and demands
its practical and liberal application to India. The
lawyers, journalists, and schoolmasters, who have
inspired the agitation for representative institutions,
for self-government after the colonial pattern, and
for internal independence under the protection ot
British bayonets, are the chief constituents of this
small but influential class, which corresponds more
or less accurately in its composition, character
and aims with what are known in Russia as the
intelligent classes.
*77 M
/fr9 w MODERN INDIA
VV Notwithstanding the agitation they have car*j» jl|^
o%:;L o rd Morley and Lord Minto’s Government
decided to continue along the path of reform, to
enlarge the Legislative Councils, and to promote
the further extension of the employment of Indians
in the government of the country.
T he Indian Councils Act marks the close of one,
and the opening of another epoch, in which it is
officially admitted that the satisfaction of the legiti­
mate claims of the classes at once intelligent and
English-educated, is not only one of the objects, but
is probably the most legitimate object of executive
and legislative solicitude. T he increasing alienation
of these classes has for a long time been notorious,
and as there is no counter-movement in our favour,
it is reasonable to conclude that the masses will in
time be, to some extent at any rate, infected with
the spirit of opposition to British rule. W hat had
to be feared at the time when Lord Morley took the
situation in hand was not another mutiny, but a
movement likely to culminate in estrangement of
the peoples of India, a feature which was wholly
wanting in the military revolt of 1857* which,
indeed, it would be of an even more serious char­
acter.
In pursuance of his declared policy, Lord Morley
appointed two Indian gentlemen to sit upon his own
Council— a bold innovation, which has, however, met
with general approval, the gentlemen he selected,
 REFORMS
Hindu and one a Mahomedan, being
common consent exceptionally well fitted for their
exalted office.
True, the Congress orators have objected to
them, but one chief object of all reform in India
must be to provide that in future representatives of
other classes than their own shall be included in
sufficient numbers in the administration.
Under the system of election in force prior to
the passing of Lord Morley’s Act, no one who was
not a nominee of the Congress party had a chance
of sitting in the Councils, though it is notorious
that that party is not representative of the many
peoples of India, but of class and caste interests,
and that the Mahomedans, Rajputs, Sikhs, and
also the lower-class and lower-caste Hindus are
opposed to its policy, and have no love for
the lawyers and politicians, who are its leading-
exponents.
The lower castes and classes see the insincerity
of the agitators, and the personal motives which too
often inspire their actions. It does not require a
trained critic to appreciate the fact that the claim
for representative institutions of the Western pattern
is founded upon the assimilation of Western civilisa
tion, and that the latter cannot be said to have
permeated the Indian social system, while com­
pulsory widowhood, infant marriage, polygamy, and
the worship, particularly in Bengal, of goddesses,
\ ( MODERN In d i a ( n j

as the ferocious Kali, flourish, not only Im lr-^

out condemnation, but with the marked approval
of the upper castes and classes, who set the
fashions, which those below slavishly follow.
It would be affectation to ignore the fact that it
is in Bengal, from which the demand for represen­
tative institutions chiefly proceed, that the most
licentious and degraded forms of Hindu superstition
are most practised, and in which the strongest
opposition was offered to the A ge of Consent Act
in 1890.
The proposals for reform which, with modifi­
cations, additions, and omissions, eventually became
law as the Indian Councils Act, 1909, originally in­
cluded the establishment of advisory councils of
notables to assist the provincial governments, and
the enlargement of the Legislative Councils of
the Governor-General, Governors and Lieutenant-
Governors, upon all of which at that time the
maintenance of an official majority was considered
a necessary condition, and was assured.
This scheme was referred for consideration
to the Local Governments, municipal, local, and
public bodies, corporations, and associations, and
to innumerable individuals whose opinion was
thought to be of special value, or likely to eluci­
date in any way the difficult problems involved.
It was not, as originally drafted, acceptable to
the leaders of the advanced party, or indeed to the
 —^ v \ ^
( if ^ j\\ REFORMS x|gT

more moderate section, which, however, approver

U w ith th e a lte ra tio n s an d m o d ific a tio n s s u b s e q u e n tly
introduced.
Of these the most important were the abandon­
ment of the scheme of advisory councils, upon which
the ruling chiefs could hardly be expected to serve
on terms of equality with men they would regard as
middle-class parvenus and as professional politicians,
the abandonment of the official majority in the Pro­
vincial Legislative Councils, alterations in the method
to be followed in the election of Mahomedan mem­
bers, and the appointment of a native of India to
the Executive, or Cabinet Council of India, though
this last all-important innovation cannot properly be
described as an alteration of a scheme of which it
forms no part. It is now, however, a great feature
of the reforms, and it has naturally been hotly
debated, and has elicited equally violent condemna­
tion and approval in different quarters.
The gentleman selected to succeed Sir Erie
Richards as legal member of the Governor-General’s
Council is Mr. Sinha, late Advocate-General of
Bengal, and no one has yet been found to deny his
fitness for the post from a legal and personal point
of view. Indeed, the selection is admitted to have
been the happiest possible, even by those who con­
demn the policy of making the appointment.
Whether a native of India can possibly fill with
success the post of member of the Executive Council
((( m t y . ) MODERN INDIA ( fij
Viceroy has yet to be proved, but if the
experiment was to be made the particular office
selected was obviously most suitable, for its occu­
pant is not placed in a position of administrative
superiority over natives of Europe as well as natives
of India in the public service. Though a mem­
ber of the Executive Council and entitled to vote on
all questions, his own peculiar functions are rather
of an advisory character, and indeed some of his
predecessors have declined to take any part in
the executive work of the Government over and
above giving legal opinions on questions referred to
them, and dealing with the drafting of Bills before
the Council.
Now the mere drafting of statutes by native
lawyers of India can be open to no possible
oejection indeed it would be hard to find men
better fitted for the work. T he danger lies in the
appointment assuming a racial aspect, which Lord
Morley has entirely repudiated on the altogether
simple and unassailable ground that the best man
available has been appointed without regard to his
nationality, and nothing has been done to prejudice
the claim of the best man in future, whatever be
his race, creed, or colour.
The appointment of Mr. Sinha, however, is no
doubt a step in the direction of that surrender of
race privilege, which those whose acquaintance with
the administration of the British Empire is more
 * GoIJjS.

REFORMS Lfr * y
\q theoretical than practical will on that a cco Sn ;-^
XJ9’' T . . . .
a.pprove. It is not by any means for this reason
that practical men will acquiesce in the step taken,
but because it obviously deprives those who cry
out that their race is a badge of inferiority of the
last vestige of justification for such a complaint.
There is no promise that the experiment will be
repeated, but one appointment on the Governor-
General’s Council, it may safely be inferred, will
in future always be held by a native of India, and
it is desirable to the last degree that the gentle­
man selected should alternately be Hindu and
Mahomedan, unless the latter religionists are to
be provided with a ready-made and real grievance,
greater than that which in the case of the Hindu
has been removed.
T he numbers of the non-official and elected
members of the Legislative Councils of Bombay.
Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces, Eastern
Bengal, and Assam, and the Punjab have been
doubled, that of Burma has been increased, fuller
play has been given to the elective principle, the
range of which has been enlarged so as to afford
representation to the all-important class of land-
owners, and to the not less valuable English com­
mercial community as well as to the professional
middle classes, to use the expression of the
Government of India, which consists chiefly of
lawyers and of members of the intelligent classes
(l( ^ 8 $ ) MODERN INDIA \OT
and castes, who are generally lumped together as
Babus, th&t being the honorific title in use among
themselves in Bengal, in certain centres of which
they exercise very considerable influence.
The Government of India, after making ex­
haustive inquiries, decided that representation by
class and interests was the only practical method
of embodying the elective principle in the con­
stitution of the Indian Legislative Councils. Lord
Morley, while agreeing that the system recom­
mended by the Government of India was suited
to limited electorates, thought that in regard to
minorities so important as the Mahomedans a system
should be devised somewhat similar to that already
adopted in regard to District Boards and Munici­
palities, which do not practise direct election, but
choose electors, who return a representative of
the group. The Mahomedans, however, protested
that their representative should be returned on a
separate register, and urged with much force that,
under the collegiate system, persons not repre­
senting Mahomedan feeling would have a better
chance of being returned than men whom they
themselves regarded as truly representative.
The expedient of a double register has proved
very successful in the Austrian Empire as a means
of preventing national conflicts, and separate repre­
sentation for the Mahomedans is obviously the
device most likely to prevent the strife and riot
if W)v REFO RM S
would probably attend a contested e le c ^ M ^
5
^' :r upbn a mixed register.
The strong objections raised by the Hindus,
who after all are four-fifths of the population, had,
however, necessarily to be allowed considerable
weight.
The mere numerical test, moreover, breaks down,
because for census and classification purposes nearly
all those who are not Mahomedans are described
as Hindus, though only a small percentage would
be recognised as such by the upper castes,
millions being in fact animists, devil worshippers,
and devotees of sundry more or less gross super­
stitions. • Though there is weight in this ob­
jection -it obviously must not be pressed too far,
since Hinduism is allowed to include the widest
range of polytheism and pantheism in its fold.
The whole question was warmly debated in the
House of Commons, and was in the end wisely-
left for settlement by the Government of India,
which has to determine the conditions of election.
Lord Morley and Lord Minto have before and
since the passing of the Act been actively occu­
pied in endeavouring to satisfy the Mahomedans
without rousing the susceptibilities of the Hindus,
who are jealous of the adoption of any but the
numerical test, which of course insures to them
complete predominance over the Mahomedan fifth
of the population. The followers of the Prophet,
(l( MODERN INDIA (fiT
"on the other hand, are not likely to forget that
they were for centuries the ruling race in India,
and that they have special claims founded upon
historical tradition as well as upon present cir­
cumstances, claims the validity and force of which
indeed both Lord Morley and Lord Minto have
fully admitted.
Another respect in which Lord Morley differed
from the Government of India was in insisting
that the latter should maintain an official majority
upon its Legislative Council, and not merely take
power to create it whenever circumstances re­
quired such a step to be taken.
These alterations did not meet with universal
approval, but the writer of these pages, who was for
four years one of the members of the Governor-
General’s Council for making Laws and Regula­
tions, strongly holds that this modification was
absolutely necessary. It is a commonplace argu­
ment of the native press that the Legislative is
over and above the Executive Council, and in a
sense the contention is hard to refute.
A question that does arise is whether it was
wise to adopt the recommendation of the Govern­
ment of India that the official majority on the
provincial legislative councils should be abandoned.
It is of course true that the passing of a measure
of which the Government disapproves in a pro­
vincial legislative council is not an irreparable
\((mW REFO RM S
as the Governor can refuse his consei^^A—J
but the frequent exercise of this veto is open to
considerable objections, and there are many who
regard with some misgivings this concession, though
it is by no means as great as at first sight appears,
for every provincial government is under the control
of the Governor-General in Council, upon whose
Council the official majority remains unimpaired.
Nevertheless, it will be a bad day for British pres­
tige in India when Bills are carried in the councils
of provinces, which are in fact vast and populous
kingdoms, against the local governments concerned.
T he mischief would not be irreparable, but to
repair it would strain the machinery and give
much occasion for thought. T he provincial councils
may in future, and indeed are very likely to, reject
legislation introduced for the protection of tenants
from landlords, and the Provincial Government will
in that case either have to leave the tenants unpro­
tected, or invoke the legislative aid of the Governor-
General's Council, on which an official majority is
assured, which will not prove a popular proceeding
with the friends of representative government.
T he probability is that in such a case the tenants
will go to the wall, and it is only another of many
proofs of the complete manner in which the repre­
sentatives of the classes in India have hoodwinked
the representatives of democracy in the British
Parliament.
iff MODERN INDIA In y
\ ^ S / ^ or in this connection should it be forgo^teA—11
the check on the election of extreme opponents
of British rule which existed in the veto of the
Viceroy, Governor, or Lieutenant-Governor is re­
moved, since no confirmation at their hands is
necessary under the new Councils Act. However
regrettable the disappearance of this safeguard
may appear, it must be frankly admitted that its
retention would have been inconsistent with the
whole spirit of Lord Morley’s policy, and that
half-hearted measures were not likely to be of
any avail in the political conditions which had
arrived. Provision is also made on the Reformed
Legislative Councils for the representation of occa­
sional [minorities such as the Christians, Sikhs,
Buddhists, and Parsees, and the facilities for de­
bate, for passing resolutions and asking questions,
including supplementary interrogatories, are ex­
tended beyond the limits contemplated by the
original scheme.
One of the most important reforms was the
raising of the strength of the Executive Councils
of Madras and Bombay to the maximum of four,
which figure will also be adopted for the Councils
of Lieutenant-Governors, when created. The
present Presidential Council being three strong,
nothing less than the addition of one member
enables the Governor with his casting vote to be
master in his own house, though he has of course
 REFORM S dScjfl

l-V which, however, he can hardly h a b itu a T g ^ j

use, to override the decisions of his Council.
One, perhaps the chief, object of this change
is the appointment of an Indian member to each
Council, which is obviously contemplated, and since
Lord Morley has put one native gentleman upon the
Viceroy’s Council, and two upon his own, the further
extension of the principle to the Presidential and
Provincial Councils might naturally be expected to
follow in no long time. It has been stated above
that Lord Morley’s Bill, as introduced, gave the
Indian Government power to create Executive
Councils for Lieutenant-Governors at its pleasure,
but that it has been finally decided to create such
a Council for Bengal only, for the present, and
to provide that Councils can be created by the
Government of India for the Lieutenant-Governors
of other Provinces, subject to the power of both
Houses of Parliament to present an address against
the Government of India’s Proclamation.
The demand for Councils for Lieutenant-
Governors proceeds solely from the advanced
reformers, who would also prefer that a Governor
from England should be appointed instead of a
Lieutenant-Governor from the Indian Civil Ser­
vice. The latter officers are not very plastic
material, and know exactly to what extent any
demand represents the wishes and feelings of the
people. Governors newly arrived from England
 ■Go%\
MODERN INDIA
Vvx^Mjdlot have this knowledge, but when p r o v id l^ ^ J
with a Council of which two members may be
natives, it is not improbable that they would prove
somewhat amenable to pressure. At any rate they
would be more ready to take for granted the claims
of prominent local politicians to represent general
public opinion.
The cost of Councillors will be very considerable,
but while the Babn class will get the appointments,
it has yet to be proved that the general taxpayer
will get anything more than an increase in taxation,
and there is certainly no proof that he displays any
interest in this matter. Nor should it ever be
forgotten that the popular feeling to which the
Government of India refers, in its despatches upon
these reforms, is the feeling of the professional
middle or Babu class, which owns the vernacular
press, whereby the boycott and svaraj agitations are
carried on, and which mans the Congress, but that
the masses of the people regard the British official
as their protector against this class, for which they
have little love, since by it they are, as they well
know, regarded as creatures of an inferior clay,
on the lowest rungs of the caste ladder, as hardly
human beings.
Great Liberal statesmen, from Mr. Gladstone
to Lord Morley, have declared that Parliamentary
representation in the congeries of countries, con­
veniently described as India, is out of the question.
 REFO RM S /Q\
y V.^^nyy&dvance, therefore, in that direction must lor ! j
^^^tstrefully watched, and all progress on these lines
will be closely scrutinised by those who have first­
hand knowledge of the many peoples, who are,
again for the sake of comprehensive classification,
but without any ethnological, geographical, social,
linguistic, or scientifically political reasons, now
described as Indians.
Lord Morley has certainly to be congratulated
in that he has succeeded in satisfying the legitimate
demands of the Mahomedans, who gained their
case by temperate representation, an admirable
example to those who have adopted methods of
violence and intimidation.
The first elections to the Indian Councils have
provoked a hostile manifesto from certain Bengali
leaders, condemning the Regulations framed by the
Indian Government as an “ ordinance of exclusion,”
though Babu Surendranath Banerji had already,
with what might well be considered unnecessary
haste, been specially exempted from the rule
against the candidature of persons dismissed from
the Government service, and the condition that
local self-governing bodies should only be repre­
sented by members thereof, had been modified so
as to allow of the candidature of persons who had
served on local boards and municipalities for any
period or periods amounting in the aggregate to
three years,
 X j S * ' Goi $ X

MODERN INDIA /£<

\ i A # mPlaint was a^so made in this manifesto tlnM j

the educated community, to whose efforts the
reforms are therein attributed, were being reduced
to an insignificant minority. B y the educated
community is here meant the English-educated
and English-speaking portion of the population,
and in Congress parlance, natives of India, how­
ever educated and cultured, are not counted as
members of this class if they have not been de­
nationalised in the schools and colleges provided
by the English Government. In short, the Con­
gress party claims that the professional middle
classes, a product of our Government educational
system, are the educated community.
d he latest Labour member traveller of course
hastens to accept the theories of his Indian guides,
and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, following in the foot­
steps of Mr. K eir Hardie, adopts wholesale the
Congress policy. But in point of fact even the
English-educated community and the Congress
party are not identical. In British India the
number of persons acquainted with English, in­
cluding schoolboys and students, is not quite a
million, and adding the English literates of native
States is not more than 1,125,0 00 out of the
294,361,000 inhabitants of India, and the former
figure includes Europeans, Eurasians, and the
native Chiistian community, numbering upwards of
300,000, for whom, and for 103,000 English-speaking
1/ oS* ■
REFORM S
\ Jp w W n e d a n s, and a large number of G o v e r n n ^ l l
x ^ T ^ v a n t s of Indian birth, nobody would pretend
that the Bengali political leaders are in any way
competent to speak. When further reductions are
made for other communities who take no part in
political agitation, there remain in ail India 685,000
persons knowing or learning English. And can
die Bengali leaders speak even for so many?
oome are Rajputs, and other Hindus who are
notoriously hostile to the Congress policy, while
amongst the Congressmen dissensions have risen
to such a pitch that its annua! meetings are with
difficulty held.
These figures prove what is known to all
persons acquainted with the East, that an infini­
tesimal proportion of the inhabitants of the con­
tinent are represented by those who regard them­
selves, and indeed to a great extent have been by
Government regarded, as exponents of educated
opinion in India.
The first elections to the Provincial Councils
had taken place just as these pages go to press,
and they abundantly prove that the educated Indian
element will predominate. Of 284 members of the
new Legislative Councils of seven Provinces, the
nominated and other official members cannot ex­
ceed 1 1 3, while of the remaining seats, 123 are
devoted to the representation of special interests,
54
being given to local self-governing bodies, and
N
 MODERN INDIA
K v i M / the Universities, while no less than 67 frrf 1 j
allotted on the principles for the acceptance of
which the Bengali leaders clamour. For instance,
trade and industry have 16 members, and 5 of
these must necessarily be Indians, while the same
number only is allotted to the all-important planting
industry. Indeed it is not likely that much more
than a dozen of the 123 hypothecated seats will fall
to members of the governing community. So little
justification is there for complaints made of favour
shown towards the Mahomedans, that only iB out
of 284 seats are allotted to this community, which
comprises no less than 23 per cent, of the popu­
lation of British India.
That 16 seats should be kept for landowners
must be regarded as very moderate representation
of that interest in a continent in which upwards
of 70 per cent, of the people are dependent upon
agriculture. In short, out of 123 hypothecated
seats not less than 100 will probably be filled by
English-educated Indians, who will be eligible as
candidates, and will almost invariably be elected
for more than four-fifths of them, nor is it likely
to happen that of the remaining 34 nominated non-
official members a large proportion will not be men
satisfying the Bengali standards.
It should be very obvious from these figures
that there is no justification for these complaints,
and that the policy of the Government has been
/jf/' W )r REFORMS IriStT
W ^roat^'of inclusion, not exclusion, of classes
interests, while no class or interest will profit so
largely as the English-educated community, which
the Bengali and Deccani leaders claim to represent.
It is devoutly to be desired that no future
Secretary of State or Viceroy of India will fail to
appreciate the fact that Lord Morley, the author
of these reforms, has plainly stated that the
ultimate executive power will not be, and cannot
be abandoned ; and if the Government, acting on
knowledge which the public did not possess, was
obliged to take steps which did not commend
themselves to the majority of the Councils, they
would nevertheless not hesitate to accept that
responsibility.

| i
© §L
CH APTER X II

S O C IA L L I F E IN I N D I A —C A S T E - R E L I G I O N

I f a native of Europe were asked by a stranger,

“ Who are you ? ” he would reply, “ l a m an English­
man, Frenchman, or German,” as the case might be.
H is nationality would come first to his lips. But if
a stranger were to ask a native of India the same
question, he would say, if he could, “ I am a Brah­
min,” and, if not, name the caste to which he
belongs. T he last thing that would occur to him
would be to say, “ I am an Indian.” T he expres-.
sion is meaningless, and conveys nothing to the
mind of a native of any of the different countries in
that great continent.
O f course, the general domination of Britain pro­
duces some sense of solidarity in those who have
been brought up in our schools and colleges, and
have been taught to consider nationality a necessary
concomitant of a knowledge of English, which they
assimilate with extraordinary ease.
E xcept in regard to these classes, who are
i per cent, of the population, caste remains the
great dividing line, the one essential label.
196
 X j S * ' *■

flf' lfrw SOCIAL L IF E IN INDIA

^ aste questions are, therefore, the most
portant when social life in India is under con­
sideration, and until the political agitation waxed
acute, what was known as social reform was re­
garded as the end and object of the advanced
English-educated class in India. In the early days
of reform, members of this class delighted to exhibit
their superiority to the prejudices of their kind. A
life of Ramtanu Lahiri, schoolmaster, Brahmin, and
reformer, who died 1898, published in 1907 under
the title “ A History of the Renaissance in Bengal,”
exhibits this “ Arnold of B en gal” as relishing
the pleasure of drink, the fathers of reform having
imbibed this habit, which was regarded by them as
a sign of education. Even students in their teens
were tipplers. Feasting on meat cooked in Maho-
medan shops was regarded as a sign of courage, and
the credit of the reformer depended on the degree to
which he indulged in such revelries. One Babu,
Ramtanu’s friend and associate, wrote : “ That wine
is an abomination and drinking a great sin has been
the belief in this country, but we cannot but admit
this belief is erroneous. Can a practice so univer­
sal among the intelligent and civilised nations of the
world be anything but highly salutary and com­
mendable. How shall we Indians become civilised
and our country freed from the sway of error and
superstition if we abstain from wine? The alumni
of the Hindu college,, who set themselves up as
§7 MODERN INDIA |n y
all drink.” The reformers generally
Ramtanu’s day reviled the Hindu religion, and
would shout in the ears of the orthodox, “ We eat
beef.” It subsequently became apparent to agita­
tors, adepts in intrigue, that they put themselves out
of court by this conduct; and for the last few years
not only have they affected respect for the preju­
dices, religious and social, of the masses, but they
have professed belief in the more obscurantist
forms of Hinduism, in the most material, most
idolatrous, and, it may be said, most degrading
aspects of a religion, which embraces every shade
of belief from monotheism to pantheism, and from
abstract philosophic reasoning to animism and
downright devil worship.
Social reform meanwhile has receded into the
background.
There is a good deal of unfriendly feeling with
regard to female education. The masses no doubt
think that it is likely to make women independent
and immoral, and they are convinced that customs
and institutions which have stood the test of cen­
turies possess surpassing merits, and who shall say
that there is not at least some sense in such reason­
ing? Indeed, many of the agitators, who prate of
the emancipation of women upon the platform, in
their private families observe to the letter the
ancient law, and stand firmly on the old world
ways.
 S 0 C IA L L I F E m JNDiA /S w
\< X S x X lie disinterment of an ancient test from tybLi
Shastras in favour of some reform has no effect
whatever on the average Indian, who is quite
shrewd enough to know that the devil sometimes
for his own purposes quotes Scripture. The fact
is that social legislation in India is already far in
advance of public opinion, and the Age of Consent
Act, for example, has proved a dead-letter.
Infant marriage, instead of being abandoned, is
probably on the increase, and the very stronghold of
this practice is a province in the van of the cyclonic
march of progress, Bengal. It is by no means so
certain, as is contended, that this custom, which is
the subject of gross exaggeration and misrepresen­
tation, is not the best for the countries and the
peoples in which it obtains, and it is quite certain
that the resultant evils have been habitually repre­
sented as far greater than they really are by mis­
sionaries, whose information and impartiality are not
always equal to their zeal and sincerity.
The Hindu system finds a husband for every
woman, and gives every man a wife; and even in
Bengal, where the figures are highest, only one-
fifth of the women are widows, as against one-tenth
in England, while the number of unmarried women
is enormously larger in England than in Bengal.
The evils brought about by this compulsory celibacy
are probably by no means less than those produced
by infant marriage and the resulting more frequent
 5
■ e° x
S( |p < M \ M ODERN IN D IA In y
’ ^vid'owhood. Nor is an army of young widows,
arc not allowed to remarry, any worse off than the
proportionately far larger number of young women
who have never been able, and are never likely to
be able, to marry at all in Europe.
It is of course true that the high castes are a
comparatively small proportion of the population;
but so surely do the lower castes copy the habits
and customs of their betters, that a description of
the life and conversation of the Brahmins might
fairly be taken as typical of that of the upper classes
of natives in most parts of India. There is no give
and take in these matters. The Brahmin is the
model upon which all others, after their lights, must
endeavour to fashion themselves.
Ritual plays a great part in his life and conversa­
tion. The building of his house, for instance, must •
be undertaken at an auspicious season, and it must
be built according to caste rules. It must have a
blank wall towards the street to provide for privacy,
and its kitchen must be the best, not the most remote
and indifferent, of all the rooms, for the preparation
and consumption of food are almost religious rites,
and the kitchen is in fact a temple, into which no
person below the caste of the owner may enter. A
Brahmin may cook for a man of lower caste, but he
will only cook food he himself might consume, and
if the shadow of his master fell upon it he would
not eat it himself.
 SOCIAL L IF E IN INDIA
A V @ / in the central verandah those sacred c re a tu ^ g jj^
' ••A.the cows, may be and often are, stabled.
In the living rooms, even in the houses of the
richest, there is very little furniture, though they
may keep a guest-chamber filled with all sorts of
superfluous things, in which to receive Europeans,
who for some reason, inexplicable to the Indian,
have adopted so comprehensive and embarrassing a
standard of requirements.
The owners of the house sleep on the floor, and
though the rich sometimes use a string bed, no one
would object to following the common practice.
Getting up in the morning, brushing the teeth,
bathing, praying, putting on caste marks, and recit­
ing texts, are incidents of the early part of the day
with a Brahmin ; and he, in like manner with the
poorer man, eats a light meal in the morning, and
the chief feast of the day comes about noon, when a
prodigious amount of food is consumed.
Mr. Keir Hardie, who lately undertook to en­
lighten the British public on India, stated that as much
seed as would satisfy a canary was the usual meal
of an Indian, and of course he adopts the good old
tale that natives of India have only one meal a day.
The fact is that all have three meals of some kind,
and that the relative time and importance of these
functions do not greatly differ from what obtains
among Europeans, though the food amongst the
high castes is of necessity, and amongst the low
'v'v MODERN INDIA VST
castes usually, of a vegetarian character. The
weight and amount of food consumed is as a fact
greatly in excess of that of the average European.
It is always eaten with the right hand off a leaf, and
water— for no Hindu should, or as a rule does, the
English-educated excepted, drink alcohol— is poured
into the mouth, so that neither the vessel in which
it is contained, nor the liquid itself, touches the lips.
Nothing contaminates more than labial contact, and
kissing is regarded as a downright disgusting prac­
tice, and never indulged in under any circumstances
by Hindus. There is more praying at lamp-lighting
time, just after the cows come home ; but, of course,
these observances are very much cut down from the
ideal, and perhaps in the case of most Brahmins,
the real, standard.
- Hindus do not go to the temple as we go to
church, but worship is duly performed each day at
the shrine by the priest on duty, just as Mass is said
in the Catholic Church, whether or not any one is
present. The women pray much less, though their
prayers are very sensible and commendable, and
her late Majesty Queen Victoria showed herself
much interested in them, and was at considerable
pains to secure trustworthy translations, some of
which the writer had the honour to prepare.
But if the women do not pray much, there is
no limit to the worship they may bestow on their
husbands, and however little this programme may
( if W^W SOCIAL L IF E IN INDIA 24 C T
XV^S^yje so-called emancipated women of Westerrh-J-Li
Europe, it is one that conduces to much affection
and esteem between husband and wife, and well
accords with the Hindu sacramental conception of
marriage. Nothing could be more beautiful than
the Hindu ideals of marriage, with which the
theory, and still more the practice in this behalf of
Western Europe and America, most unfavourably
contrast.
In the lower classes the women work hard
with, and earn nearly as much as, their husbands,
the children helping according to their degree,
quite small creatures making their mite after their
powers.
There is much simple kindly feeling and charity
in the ordinary Indian peasant’s household. He is
contented with his lot, and so far is deaf to the
voice of the agitator, who for personal reasons
points out to him that he ought to be miserable
and oppressed.
In ordinary years his family lives in tolerable
comfort, but when prices rise in time of agricultural
scarcity he has to take to Outdoor—which has been
unwisely described as Famine—Relief. The so-
called Famine Code is one of the most practical
and scientific instruments ever elaborated by ad­
ministrative man, and no one need now die of want
m India, any more than any one need starve at
home, while our English poor law is in operation'.
v v $ / 4 MODERN INDIA (g T
The lower down the scale the less the oDSe^^*
vance of prayers, rites, and ceremonies, till the
animists do little more than make obeisance to the
sun in the morning, to the lamp at night, and bow
before the painted stone strewn with flowers as they
pass it on their way to and from the village and
the fields.
The Hindu, provided he observes the rules of
his caste, is pretty free to do what he pleases, within
certain limitations, and no one of them is bound
to believe more than he likes of his own religion.
Only the philosophically minded probably trouble
about the division into dualists, who believe that
the human will and the material world have dis­
tinct existences, and the non-dualists, who believe
that nothing has any separate existence from the
one God. Not one Hindu in a thousand troubles
himself about such matters, but most of them wor­
ship Siva, or Vishnu, generally in the latter case in
one or other of his manifestations or incarnations.
It is a singular thing, and marks abysmal in­
capacity to approach die very threshold of know­
ledge on the part of the English public, that it
never realises that though caste is the guiding-star
of the inhabitants of India, those who are accepted
in England as authorities on Indian political and
other subjects, are invariably those who have shaken
off what they call its trammels, and eat beef and
drink brandy like Europeans, and, like them, by no
 SOCIAL L IF E IN INDIA 20 /^ J
• mG^is necessarily, to excess. For a Hindu to d c r ^ ^ j
either a little is, however, as bad as to do either to
excess.
It is small wonder that scant justice is done to
the real character and disposition of the amiable and
admirable peoples of India, so utterly unlike those
who profess to represent them.
Marriage is the great event in any man or
woman’s life, and eating and drinking and giving of
presents form as prominent a part of the entry into
the holy estate in India, as these functions do in
England. The ordinary peasant will squander all
he has and borrow more for his marriage, and
there are many knowing the country well who think
that all the margin which our taxation allows the
peasant to enjoy, and any further savings that he
may be able to accumulate by reduction of rent
or taxation, merely result in each individual case
in his borrowing up to the limit of his larger credit,
and spending greater sums than ever upon marriage
and other ceremonies.
Though no wine is drunk amongst the upper
classes, except by the English-educated, intoxi­
cating drinks have always been used in India from
very early times. Such use, however, was always
confined to the lower castes, and drinking was,
and still is, considered a degrading vice. It would
conduce greatly to the comfort of the poorer classes
if tea-drinking became a more common practice,
: ~ ' n
(( MODERN INDIA (n y
A ^ ^ % ^ a u s e in that event they would, besides enjoyo*|M
a refreshing stimulant and new luxury, drink water
that had been boiled, a most necessary precaution,
but a hopeless one, to suggest to people who re­
gard the element as so pure that it is incapable of
contamination, and drink it without any qualms,
however unfit for human consumption. The
Government, however, has been persevering in the
efforts initiated by Lord Curzon to bring about
this desirable consummation, and it remains for the
slow-moving masses to follow suit.
As at birth and marriage, so at death, there are
many ceremonies. The Hindu must die on the
ground, and the writer of these pages has seen the
ex-minister of a great native State carried from his
bed to lie beside the sacred stream and upon holy
Mother Earth, which nothing can contaminate,
that he might die as a Hindu should, and that his
house might avoid pollution.
Most Hindus burn their dead, and some castes
think that the departed spirit must be stayed with
ceremonies lest it return and jibber about the
precincts, which in its earthly envelope it once fre­
quented. In no long time man is born again to run
another course of mortal life, until at length, after
many rebirths, to be endured with patience and
resignation, the purified spirit qualifies for absorp­
tion into the Divine Essence.
Though the natural demeanour of the native of
( iY ' SO CIAL L IF E IN INDIA
one of the utmost gravity, this proceeff^X j
^^fjpnjHiis standard of deportment, which is high,
and not from melancholy. There is no reason to
believe that the Hindu home is sadder than that of
other races, or at all sad. On the contrary, men and
women alike have a strong taste for simple pleasures,
and the females love a gossip and indulge in it, for
amongst Hindus it is only the upper castes who,
in parts of the continent, have borrowed the Maho-
medan custom of seclusion behind the purdah. In
a certain sense there is seclusion of women all over
the East, for everywhere modesty requires that they
should abstain from conversation with strangers, or
from anything that could possibly be construed as a
dereliction from the very high standards required of
the Hindu wife, widow, and maiden.
It is a pleasure to quote the late Mr. R. C.
Dutt, who elsewhere would appear to adopt the
theory that the peasant is ground down by an
alien administration, when he say s: “ The people
of India dislike and disapprove the rapid introduc­
tion of modern Western methods. . . . There is
not on the whole earth a more frugal and contented
peasantry.”
The writer of these pages, though he has en­
deavoured to see what he can of the world, is not in
a position to speak for the whole earth, but he can
confirm the statement that the people appear to be,
as they probably are, tranquil and contented.
/ i^ tS T n MODERN INDIA /^j
\ r V § y tylMany and great men might be quoted asj^jjj- j
nesses to the merits of Hindus, untouched by
Western education, and the writer of these pages
accepts all these testimonies, and would add his
own tribute of respect and affection for peoples
admirable in all relations of domestic life, and
though perhaps easily imposed upon by unscrupu­
lous agitators, naturally less prone to think evil of
their rulers than any others with which he has any
acquaintance.
What Mr. Crooke, one of the best living autho­
rities, says of the peasant of Northern India, is
equally true of his brother in the South, and
probably holds good of the Indian peasant at all
points of the compass. Mr. Crooke says :—
“ His life is one of ceaseless toil, but it enforces
industry and temperance, and is compatible with
a ready cheeriness which finds amusement in the
veriest trifles.”
It would be a great mistake to suppose that
the wife of the peasant is nothing but a drudge.
She is not perhaps worse off than her sister in
similar grades in other parts of the world, and the
same thing might be said of her husband.
Nor are the women behind the purdah, who are
enormously pleased'to find themselves there, and
would never relinquish this sign of superiority,
without amusement or occupation. Amongst the
Mahomedans the rule is more strict, but in Persia,
a S a SOCIAL L IF E IN INDIA (g T
the purdah is universal, women enjoy v e ^
'considerable liberty, not in spite of, but because
of the disguise which it affords, and the resulting
freedom fronffltbservation by husband or relations,
whenever vysJPfen leave the house, as of course,
except in the case of the very highest classes,
they do every day.
Abbd Dubois, who probably knew India better
than any European before or since his day, while he
says that no European Government in India will
ever succeed in materially raising the condition of
the depressed classes, yet finds in caste the best
part of the Hindu system. But all this would be
rejected wholesale by the caste-renouncing, E n g ­
land-visiting, flesh and wine consuming, reformers,
who harangue and persuade the people of this
country that their fellow-countrymen have appointed
them to represent their wishes and aspirations,
which, as a fact, are not usually centred upon Par­
liamentary institutions, and the further employment
in the public service of the same self-appointed
representatives.
Nevertheless, there is no word written here
which cannot be confirmed from the writings of the
greatest authorities about India, and even in many
cases from the writings of some of the advanced
reformers, before they found salvation, or when they
expected to find it on different lines.
There remains the much-debated question of
o
i f W iVV| . MODERN INDIA Iq t
v intercourse between natives of Europe and naSvA-^
of India, as to which it has to be decided first of all
whether it is possible, and next whether it is desirable,
that both should meet upon equal terms. Obviously
it is desirable that the most friendly relations should
exist, but is it likely that efforts to bring about reci­
procity of social intercourse between peoples, who
differ entirely in creed, colour, and custom, will be
successful ? T he slightest effort on the part of the
Englishman to penetrate into the women’s quarters
of the Mahomedan, or even of the Hindu, except
upon the Malabar coast, would at once lead to a
complete rupture of friendly relations. It is often
argued that the Hindu and Mahomedan are to
blame for not allowing reciprocity of intercourse in
regard to the females of their respective families,
but it is difficult to understand why this charge
should be made.
In the case of a European it is his custom to
introduce his friends to his wife. H e would not be
supposed to have met them in a friendly spirit if
circumstances brought his women into potential con­
tact with them, and wife and daughter held aloof.
But there is no such feeling on the part of the
Hindu or Mahomedan. H e does not introduce
his friends of his own colour, creed, and caste
into his harem or zenana, and how, therefore, could
it be expected of him that he should introduce men
o f an alien race to the annoyance of his own women,
fiYl&W SOCIAL LIFE IN INDIA
V ©whobwould thereby be exposed to the contemptuj f l J
—.1 • ,
their own people.
So far from its being the case that the breaking
down of these barriers would lead to more friendly
intercourse, there is every reason to believe that the
exact contrary would be the result.
It is not on these lines that the peoples of India
and Europe are to be brought into closer com­
munion, but by scrupulous respect on the one, for
the habits, customs, and prejudices of the other,
side.
The chief bar at present to friendly intercourse
is the incapacity of almost every European to talk
freely with the natives of India in their own lan­
guages, and here, at least, considerable advance is
possible. Of course conversation is easy with the
English-educated, but they are the non-represen­
tative i per cent, of the population. There are
different fields in which the different races may
meet on terms of equality, but none is more con­
spicuous than the sphere of sport, wherein in all
countries a spirit of equality and mutual good
feeling prevails.
Again how untenable is the contention that there
can be no friendly relations until commensality is
possible. It is, on the contrary, the fact that noth­
ing is so certain to produce a rupture as an effort to
make the different races sit together at meat, or
to dip their hands together in the dish. E very
 MODERN INDIA ( o j
European feels this strongly in his own case,
and every native of India is still more under the
domination of the same feeling. Englishmen in
their hearts think they are the cleanest feeders in
the world, and often congratulate themselves upon
their superiority over other European races in this
respect. Indians, without the slightest shadow of
a doubt, regard all European races, including the
English, as unclean feeders. It may be objected
that this is not the attitude of the English-educated.
That is not by any means certain, but in any case
one who has forsaken the gods of his fathers is
hardly an authority on the feelings of those who
regard him as an outcast.
Not so long ago in India, but in what is dis­
tinctly the past, irregular relations existed very
commonly between natives of Europe and natives
of India, but these have been abandoned since
English women arrived in the country in sufficient
numbers to provide Europeans with wives. The
hopelessness of any attempt at fusion is proved by
the results of such mixed marriages as sometimes
occur. These have occasionally turned out satis­
factorily in the case of Mahomedans, but as a rule
experience tells another story with them, and almost
universally with Hindus. Those who wish to study
this subject cannot do better than read romances
in which the relative social position between natives
of Europe and India is treated with full knowledge
 S0C iA L L IF E IN INDIA JQ L
V\ I w ^ y by authors who thoroughly unqg^-j j
life among the natives and the half castes.
Legitimate, are even more disastrous than illegiti­
mate, relations with Hindu women, and the further
development of Western education in India accen­
tuates the domestic incompatibility of natives of
India and of Europe.
IP §L
C H A P T E R X III

N A T IV E S T A T E S —IM P E R IA L S E R V IC E TROOPS—
B R IT IS H R E S ID E N T S

T hough the native States of India extend over an

area of 679,392 square miles, or 38 per cent, of the
Indian Empire, and have a population of 62,461,549
out oi a total of 294,361,056, their importance is
but dimly recognised in England, or the fact that
the ruling princes are the chief personal factors in
the Empire.
Babus like Surendranath Banerji and Bepin
Chandra Pal fill the public eye here, to the ex­
clusion of great princes like the Nizam, the Maharaja
of Mysore, Maharaja Sindhia, the ruling chiefs of
Rajputana, the sacrosanct Maharaja of Travancore,
and many others, from the rulers of States almost
as large as Great Britain, down to the lords of
kingdoms smaller than Monte Carlo. It is with
a shock of surprise that even those who know
something of India realise that native States
occupy one-third of the area, and account for one-
fifth of the population, of the Empire, and that
one group alone, that of Rajputana, exceeds the
size of the United Kingdom.
2x4
 Go%x
(|7 NATIVE STATES
Emperor of India is Suzerain of
Indian States, the rulers of which are privileged
to legislate and administer justice, while the
King-Emperor’s Government reserves the right
to make war or peace, and to negotiate with
foreign powers and other native States in India,
so that no chief can be described as externally
independent.
With the exception of the protected princes of
Rajputana, and the Malabar States of I ravancore
and Cochin, most of the others are of comparatively
modern origin, and date from the time when the
Mogul Empire was crumbling away, the Mahrattas
were erecting predatory dominations on its ruins,
and the English were building up an Empire of
their own.
It was the policy of England to confirm the
rulers who had just, or had hardly, consolidated
themselves in their precarious seats, and interest,
as well as personal loyalty—a force the power and
vitality of which it would be very unwise to under­
rate— binds these powerful feudatories to ourselves.
When it is said, and with much truth, that the
British in India succeeded the Mahrattas, and not
the Moguls, the statement must also be qualified
by the important proviso that the Mahratta rule
consisted merely of levying a fourth part of the
revenue of all weaker powers, and that no real
administration, even in the most elementary sense,
§V ® 2 \ i MODERN INDIA lO T
ever attempted by these hardy and predatfe?}*^
— ilorsemen.
The Nizam of Hyderabad, originally Lieutenant-
Governor of the South for the Emperor at Delhi,
was practically independent at the time of the rise
of the Mahratta power.
Mysore is an ancient Hindu kingdom, restored by
favour of the British to the Hindu family, which had
been dispossessed by Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan.
Travancore and Cochin are old-world Hindu
States, which ages ago were very much as they
are now, or rather as they were until quite recently,
before the intrusion of railways at the instance of
the paramount power, and not on the initiative of
ruler or ruled.
Nepaui is on a somewhat different footing from
that of the other native States, and owing to its
position and history enjoys greater independence,
but its relations with foreign powers are under the
control of the Government of India. Its area and
population are not exactly known, and the Shan
States of Burma, the Khasia and Jaintia Hills,
Manipur and Bhutan, are not included in the figures
of area and population above given.
The doctrine of lapse was abandoned, and the
right of adoption recognised, by the British Govern­
ment, under circumstances into which it is needless
here to enter, but as lately as 1891 it was laid down
in regard to Manipur that the sovereign power has
 x jS * ■Go% \
NATIVE ST A T E S'
^ 'T ^^yri^ht, and is under obligation, to settle tn e fl J
^^succession where necessary in protected States.
It is, however, clearly established that the
privileges of ruling chiefs will be respected, and
that they and their subjects are exempt from the
laws of British India, and independent as regards
their internal administration.
Peace is secured to them by the arms of the
paramount power, and they are forbidden to employ
without permission subjects of other European
nations, while their own subjects outside their
territory become practically British subjects. Thus
the anarchist Krishnavarma’s contention that he
owes no allegiance to the British Government can­
not be supported in fact, as soon as he leaves the
native State to which he belongs, or pretends to
belong.
As they cannot make war on one another these
States need no armies, and cannot keep such, over
and above a prescribed standard, and it is only at
their own desire that they maintain troops, which
in some cases, also at their own desire, are used as
an Imperial Service Corps, under the inspection of
British officers, and when placed by the native chief
concerned at the disposal of the Indian Government,
are then, and then only, available for use alongside
British Indian troops.
It is quite untrue, therefore, as was stated in
a little book lately published by Mr. Keir Hardie,
V ( § 2}* MODERN INDIA 'S T
W ^ u i a t every native State is under obligation to
tain troops to assist the British Indian army. The
case of the Hyderabad contingent is of a peculiar
character and subject to special treaties, which were
entered into at a time when the Nizam and the
British were far more nearly on equal terms in India
than is now the case.
The British claim to exercise, in cases of serious
misgovernment, the right to interfere, or even to
assume the administration of native States. In this
way Mysore was taken over and managed by the
Indian Government for fifty years, with the result
that its administration has remained practically
British in type since its restoration, on his attaining
his majority, to the young Maharaja, who had been
adopted by the prince, whose misgovernment led to
the assumption of control by the British.
Similarly the late Gaekwar of Baroda was de­
posed, and other less conspicuous examples might
be quoted from Rajput and other States.
The powers of the Governor in Council in the
territory of ruling chiefs are exercised through
political officers generally known as British Resi­
dents, who are either civil servants or members of
the Indian army in civil employ. O f the two
classes, at any rate in native States in political
relations with Provincial Governments, a military
officer of special training is to be preferred, be­
cause the inevitable tendency of civil servants is
 NATIVE STATES
^ © V e i i d e a v o u r to introduce methods of a d m in isth lL '
like those to which they have themselves
been accustomed.
The same remark applies to the Dewans or
Pi-me Ministers of native States, who are appointed
by the ruling chief concerned, but whose appoint­
ment requires the confirmation of the British Indian
Government, and it is to be feared that not infre­
quently these Ministers are appointed on the advice
of the Resident, rather than upon the initiative of
the 1 uling chief, which it is the declared policy of
the Government of India to respect. Where such
Ministers have previously been employed as ad­
ministrators in British territory, they take office
with an ineradicable tendency to introduce British
standards. Thus in many cases the precious in­
dividuality of the native State, and its value as a
standard of comparison with British India, is lost, or
impaired, by the unnecessary and indeed undesirable
interference of Ministers whose duty it should be
to preserve, and not overthrow the native system
they find in being.
1 hus,given a Resident who is a civil servant
from the neighbouring Local Government, and a
Minister who is also a servant of the same Govern-
. ment’ ,ent for a term of years to the native State, the
ruling chief, unless he has an exceptionally mas­
terful personality, will inevitably find his initiative
impaired and his powers of control compromised.
 MODERN INDIA
7
V ^ v ® y i . lt is much to be desired that Residents wnoa re j
appointed by Local Governments should be sternly
forbidden to attempt to administer native States
after the British fashion, that Ministers should be
chosen from the inhabitants of the State itself,
and that they should be left to manage affairs
in concert with, and under the supervision of, the
ruling chief, without interference except in cases of
gross misgovernment.
Instructions to this effect are given by the
Government of India, and there is clear evidence
that Lord Morley and Lord Minto wish to jealously
guard the rights of ruling chiefs. Nevertheless, in
some cases, and particularly in respect of native
States in political relations with Provincial Govern­
ments, the spirit of these instructions by no means
inspires the Resident and the Local Government.
This is the more unfortunate as ruling princes will
not as a rule complain, and it is easy to understand
their reasons for abstention.
It is not to be supposed from these remarks
that ruling chiefs are discontented. Indeed the
contrary is the fact, but that is only another reason
for the most scrupulous, and even meticulous, recog­
nition of their rights.
Nothing could be better than their attitude has
been throughout the recent unrest in India. Ruling
chief after ruling chief, by means of resolutions,
meetings, and letters to the Times, has repudiated
 NATIVE STA TES 2/P i
(; ( i^reftesentations of the British Government w h i l j S J ^
^||a|^appeared day by day for some years past in
the vernacular press, nor has one of them been
slow to take the necessary action for stamping out
sedition in his own State.
In Mysore, which is often held up by ignorant
critics as an example to British India, of which it is
of course a mere reflection, an exceedingly drastic
press law providing for the expulsion and punish­
ment of seditious journalists has just been passed.
In many States men of this kind, the curse of
modern India, are promptly ejected from native
teiritory in which they have attempted to make
mischief.
The Maharaja Sindhia, a most able, loyal, and
enterprising prince, has just meted out prompt and
severe punishment, such as natives of India under­
stand and respect, to a gang of conspirators who
within his territory attempted to plot against the
British Government, and he said :—
“ He who seeks to subvert the Government of
His Majesty in India, a Government supremely
humane and just, and which I have no doubt was
ordained by Providence to bring happiness and
prosperity to His Majesty’s Indian subjects, is in
my eyes at once a contemptible ingrate and a traitor
to his own country.”
His Highness also took a recent opportunity to
emphasise, for the special guidance of students in
//> .—XV\
if MODERN IN D IA Irjy

8§9i| 'schools and colleges, that his GovernmentkWM

not incur expenditure on their education in order
to train them up as discontented and objectionable
members of society. Possibly such is not the
intention of the British Government.
Another prominent prince, the Maharaja of Jey-
pur, has just issued a regulation for prosecuting and
punishing the preaching of sedition, and these great
ruling chiefs, who are the natural leaders of the
people, are, it should be understood, at the opposite
pole from the position occupied by the Brahmin
lawyers, who have organised the unrest, and, with
their friends, are to profit by the new appoint­
ments created under the reforms, which came into
force in the beginning of 1910.
The agitators continually put forward the ex­
ample of the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, who
is no doubt a very able prince, but one who is far
from representing the feelings of his order, with
which, indeed, in many respects he is entirely at
variance. No one will deny that he is a good
administrator and that his State is well governed,
but it must be remembered that it is an exception­
ally fertile tract of country, that the Maharaja is
an innovator by temperament, and that, without in
any way disparaging the condition of Baroda, it
may fairly be stated that other States are quite as
well administered. Indeed, if the extent to which
coercive process is used in the collection of the
 ' G°i^\
NATIVE STA TES CSt
be regarded as a test, as the a n ti- B r itk fr ^
5
v -pSrty in Parliament often contend, the claims of
Baroda must go by the board, for in this rich
territory collection by coercive measures is far
more common than in British India or in most
other native States.
One of the reasons, it may be conjectured, for the
abandonment of the original proposal made in con­
nection with the reforms which lately came before
Parliament, that Advisory Councils of Notables
should be created to assist the Government of-
India, and to diffuse correct information regarding
its acts and intentions, is that ruling chiefs could
not be expected to sit with pleaders and profes­
sional middle-class people such as are now pushing
their way to the front as exponents, as they claim,
of public opinion. But the existence of such public
opinion must be taken on trust, for the press which
gives voice to it is the press which is under the
thumbs of these gentlemen themselves.
The control exercised by the Supreme and Pro­
vincial Governments over native States varies in
degree, but all are administered by the ruling chiefs
through their Ministers, with the advice and assist­
ance of a political agent appointed by the Govern­
ment of India, and nearly all of them pay a tribute
t the Government of India, which, however, does
not in turn pay any tribute whatsoever to the Home
Vrovernment.
(if MODERN INDIA
m ^ 5 ^ / O v e r and above its functions in connec^kfrr^
with the native States, the Government of India
is in political relations with Turkish Arabia
at storied Baghdad, where a British Resident
is maintained, with the barren rocks of Aden
and the neighbouring Arab hinterland, with the
grape-bearing furnace of Muscat, with the dreary
islands of Perim and Socotra, with the Persian
Gulf, that quiet inland sea which may some day
perhaps become one of the storm centres of the
world, with parts of the kingdom of Persia, with
Afghanistan, with Siam, and with the empire of
China, and its tributary province of Tibet. There
are also the chiefs who dwell upon both shores of
the Persian Gulf, who are more under the control
of the British Resident at Bushire and the British
Indian Steam Navigation Company than under that
of the King of Kings at Teheran, or of the Caliph
at Constantinople.
It is the British alone who put down slavery
in the Persian Gulf, and notwithstanding the, in
this respect only, unsatisfactory Anglo - Russian
Convention, it is they chiefly who carry on trade
and have a living interest in the shores of this
burning inland sea, whereon the traveller melts
away as he sits supine under an awning on the
deck, in a summer temperature which far exceeds
all Indian experience.
The Government of India has a very close interest
. ' 60l%\
NATIVE STATES f&T
\^Jm Ah>e progress of the Baghdad Railway schem eJ h?Jm
v - k is m«st desirable that the British Government
should negotiate as early as possible with the
reformed Government of Turkey either to bring
about the international control of the whole line,
or as an alternative,, or better as an addition, to
obtain for Britain the construction of the G ulf
section. Meanwhile we have been so far alive
to the situation as to maintain our position as
protectors of the Sheiks of ICoweit and Bassein,
petty potentates in whom great powers have never­
theless deigned to take an interest.
The Government of India has quite recently
delimited the frontier between Persia, Baluchistan,
and Afghanistan at the court of the K ing of which
latter country it maintains an agent. F o r the
Am eers title of K ing is now recognised, and if
personal power, extent of territory, and relative
position amongst the Mahomedan States of the
world be considered, it would be difficult to contest
his claim to this coveted honour.
The ruler of Afghanistan occupies an uneasy
throne, and a fanatical dislike of all Europeans is
i ather expected from him as a matter of course by
the priests—

‘ The mullahs, the bigots who preach and pray.”

Neither the Ameer or any of his successors should

he hardly judged, for it may happen at any time
p
V( ^ a m odern in d ia {n y
while the ruler of Afghanistan appears ^per^
^rcrse and unfriendly, he may nevertheless be doing
his best to fulfil his engagements with the British
in circumstances of no little difficulty. It is not
every Afghan ruler who can say of the priests with
the Ameer Abdul Rahman—

“ They trusted in texts, and forgot that the chooser of

kings is a sword;
There are twenty now silent and stark, for I showed
them the ways of the Lord.”

Not often do even the barren hills and hard con­

ditions of life in Afghanistan breed such men as the
late Ameer.
Upon the whole, with insignificant exceptions,
peace hfes been preserved on the Afghan frontier
since the great Tirah campaign. May it long
continue, and may England never forget the
devoted and efficient service of the brave soldiers
and able diplomatists who serve her so well so
far from the limelight of party politics, so remote
from their demoralising influences.
The native princes of India proper are surely
one of the most versatile and attractive bodies of
men, which the imagination can well conceive.
T hey are for the most part equally at home in
society in India or Europe ; they are loyal, brave,
tactful, diplomatic, and well read, generally pos­
sessed of good judgment, and, occupying a secure
r ( S a n a t iv e state s 2\fiJ
themselves, are ready and anxious to
respect the rights of others.
Whether the peoples of India are happier in
native States or in British India is really a much
less important question than might appear. A
more or less common standard is imposed by the
suzerainty of the British, and it may be safely
stated that the inhabitants of India love to see
their princes occupying a position, in some sense,
of equality with the representative of the King-
Emperor.
It is also the case that where the Indian princes
really select their own Ministers from amongst the
inhabitants of their own States, and obtain for
them a fairly free hand, the personal element in
the administration is of a less precise and scientific
character, and is on that account more acceptable
to a people who, loving litigation, hate lawyers,
and regard them as the least suitable of all people
to occupy the seats of the mighty.
 ■ Goi x *

IP <SL
CH APTER X IV

P R O G R E SS OF T H E L A S T F IF T Y Y E A R S

I n the foregoing chapters I have endeavoured to

briefly describe the physical aspects of India and
its various languages and ethnology; in the most
cursory fashion to glance at the wild life of the
jungle, a fascinating and inexhaustible subject ; to
lightly limn the foundations of the British Govern­
ment ; to touch in passing upon the economics of
modern In d ia; to give a short description of the
present position of the Indian army, particularly
of Lord Kitchener’s reforms, and of the manner of
the administration of the Empire of British India.
The Civil Service, by which that administration
is carried on, has called for a chapter, and our
system of education, fraught with such momen­
tous, and by no means in all respects satisfactory,
results, has been presented in its main features to
the reader. The present political conditions obvi­
ously demand due notice, and out of that subject
naturally arises an account of the reforms which
have just been brought into being, and which can­
not but result in vast changes in the administration
228
A */« jjj£l®p G R E S S OF T H E LAST F IF T Y Y E A R S / ^ } T
country; but which, it may be hoped, wujfl J
. y ;something to allay the growing discontent of
a small, but highly articulate, class of the inhabi­
tants of certain provinces of the Empire.
Social life in India is a theme upon which
volumes might be written, and upon which, in­
deed, volumes have been written, by extremely
well-qualified writers, from the Abbe Dubois to
Mr. Crooke. It has only been possible for me
to lightly touch upon this fascinating subject, and
to briefly describe those native States, the pre­
servation of which is so valuable as a proof of our
good faith, and as a standard of comparison with
our own British-Indian administration.
So much has been written, whether or not in
good faith, whether or not with knowledge and
information, in disparagement of the great adminis­
trative achievements of the British in India, that
it appears appropriate to, and within the scope
of, this little work, to shortly review some of the
results of British rule in that congeries of countries,
with widely differing physical characteristics, with
various peoples speaking many languages, pro­
fessing many creeds, and with greatly differing
degrees of civilisation, which, as a matter of con­
venient classification, is commonly called India.
During the last fifty years, which have been
less disturbed by internal warfare than any other
period of equal length in the history of the
 ' Go^ \ i}
iff MODERN INDIA (q t
^continent, the Government has been able to direk$-»-^
and has assiduously directed, its attention towards
internal progress and improvement. In spite of
unfriendly and unsustainable criticisms of an alleged
aggress‘ve attitude on the part of the English in
India, the rendition of Mysore restored to native
rule a larger population and revenue than belongs
to all the new territories acquired in the last fifty
years.
It has already been stated elsewhere that the
employment of Indians in the public service has been
immensely increased during the last half century.
Indeed eleven natives now occupy seats in the four
highest Courts of Justice, and four are judges in the
Judicial Commissioners’ Courts. The Civil Service
of India, from which the superior officers of the
civil administration are drawn—a body of which a
description has been given in Chapter V I I I .—con­
sists of 1 244 members, of whom, owing to exigen­
cies of climate, under 1000 are generally on duty.
Of the highest classes of appointments, which were
formerly reserved for what used to be called the Cove­
nanted Civil Service of India, recruited in England
by competitive examination, 51 appointments, in
eluding 17 headships of districts, and 26 district
judgeships, all positions of the highest importance,
are now open to the Provincial Civil Service, which
is chiefly manned by natives of the country.
I he Provincial Civil Service, as distinguished
(§ ( P ro g ress of t h e la st f if t y years

X ^ S i f r i h e Civil, formerly called Covenanted C iv iljL L /

Service, comprises 2063 subordinate judges and
magistrates, of whom 2067 are natives oi India,
and no appointment made in India with a salary of
Rs. 200 ( ^ 13 ) a month and upwards, can be filled
by any other than natives of that country.
Thus while natives of Europe are excluded irom
all posts except those specially reserved for them,
natives of India are admitted to a very considei-
able share of the highest offices formerly reserved
for Europeans. Indeed the former now manage
most of the revenue and magisterial work, and
perform practically all the duties of the Civil
Courts, and they are in receipt ot salaries not
surpassed in any country in Europe, except Great
Britain.
The action taken by Lord Morley and Lord
Minto to deal with the increasing work devolving
upon all departments of Government has been
described in Chapter V I I . ; but up to the date of
the printing of these pages no orders have been
passed on the recommendations of the Decentralisa­
tion Commission. Nevertheless, during the last
few years, the financial powers of Local Govern­
ments, and the general powers of municipal and
other local bodies, have been largely increased;
and measures have been taken to enable the
Government to cope with the ever-growing burden
of administration without largely adding to the cost.
(if MODERN INDIA vfiT
V ^ ^ ^ ^ '/^ g a rd s legislation, it is only necessary ic
^cpiote Sir Henry Maine to the effect that British
India is one of the few countries in the world
in which men of moderate intelligence, who can
read, may learn the law on any point in practical
life.®
An illustration of the nature of the criticism
passed on British administration is afforded by the
fact that nine-tenths of the civil suits, and more
than three-quarters of the magisterial business, is
disposed ot by native judges and magistrates, and
that there are upwards of three thousand honorary
magistrates, nearly all natives of the country.
All civil suits and important criminal cases are
tried by special judicial officers unconnected with
the executive administration. Minor criminal cases
are tried by officers who also exercise executive
powers, but this union of executive and judicial
functions has always existed in the East, and
besides being of course more economical, is also
approved by the general opinion of the masses of
the people. The objections taken to the exercise
oi the joint functions really originated in a desire
to impair the position of the head officers of the
districts, who, though they practically do not exer­
cise magisterial powers, still must possess such
authority in order that they may occupy that posi­
tion of influence and importance which is required
top and has irom time immemorial attached in
( f f 1g fR ^ G R E S S OF T H E LAST F IF T Y Y E A R S IQ IT
to, the head of the government of e a b Jr -^
administrative unit.
Perpetual criticism has of late been levelled
at the Police Department, which is nevertheless
staffed by natives of India who are fair representa­
tives of their fellow-countrymen, and contains a far
smaller leaven of European supervisors than any
other branch of the public service.
While great prominence has been given by
Congress critics to the faults of the police in order
to discredit action taken for the repression of sedi­
tion and political assassination, the heads of various
provinces have recently acknowledged that the
morale and intelligence of the force have been
continuously improved. The system in being in
Europe counts on the co-operation of the educated
classes, but this is unfortunately at present entirely
wanting in India. Indeed, for the last few years,
crimes arising out of sedition and political agitation
have generally been both organised and committed
by members of the English-educated classes, and
more often than not by Brahmins of high social
position and intelligence. Y et it was the great
Radical philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who wrote
“ that people must be considered unfit for more
than a limited and qualified freedom who will not
co-operate freely with the law and the public
authorities in the repression of evil-doers.”
Reference has been made in Chapter V . to the
 MODERN INDIA /^ j
’ lSwtl revenue system, and it remains here to obserqmfrl i
5
Ns th S^ ow in g to the extension of railways and irri­
gation, the position of the agricultural classes has
greatly improved during the last fifty years, and
sales of land for the recovery of revenue have pro­
gressively and continuously declined. Such are now
far more frequent in native States like Baroda,
which is frequently put forward by uninformed
critics as an example to British India.
Increase in the assessment, upon which hostile
comment has been made, is accompanied by a
greater additional increase in cultivation. For
instance, in the Punjab, while the land revenue
has risen by 80, the cultivated area has been
augmented by ioo, per cent.
It may seem strange to those who have grown
accustomed to the confident statement that in India
the population already presses upon the cultivable
area to learn that in some provinces the cultivable
area has increased in recent years by ioo per cent.
But, as a fact, India is by no means an over-popu­
lated country. O f the actual area of British territory
-6 15 ,3 3 2 ,7 5 5 acres— less than two-thirds are culti­
vated. Under forest there are 82,282,579 acres,
while 153,526,525 acres are uncultivable or appro­
priated to other uses. There remain 379,523,551
acres which are suitable for cultivation, and of
this area 2 10 ,8 8 3,5 11 acres were actually cropped
last year. The rest is divided between fallows—
W | p ^ 0 G R E S S OF T H E LAST F IF T Y Y E A R S I ^ T
L7 o6 acres — and good land suitable
cultivation, to the respectable total of 113,288,344
acres.
The land settlement of the Emperor Akbar,
at once the most lenient and able of the Great
Moguls, was based on a demand by Government
for^ one-third of the gross produce of each field,
while the present settlement in the Punjab repre­
sents from one-tenth to one-fourteenth of the gross
produce, and everywhere all over the country land
ets for a far higher rent than the Government
assessment. T he executive measures taken by the
Bntish Government to protect the tenants of the
Bengal landlords, as a result of which, there is
reason to believe, many of the latter have joined
the Congress movement, have done them no in­
justice, for their gross rental has increased four- or
five-fold since the settlement of Lord Cornwallis,
who had intended, though he failed, to protect the
position of the tenant.
I11 the interests of the cultivators, although the
*ules and regulations may, and sometimes do, press
hardly upon them, the Government of India has
instituted a systematic conservancy of the fQrests,
which are now worked with the object of combining
facilities for their use by the public with such pro­
tection as is necessary for their preservation as
sources of fuel and timber, and retainers of moisture
m the soil. Forests are accordingly now classified
 MODERN INDIA ^
r \ ^ reserved, protected, and unclassed accordingVa^ I
^ ^ jK ^ o n t r o l of the Department is more or less com­
plete. Under the last-named head indeed is in­
cluded uncultivated land, more resembling the Scotch
deer forests than what is commonly signified in
England by the word forest. The reserves, how­
ever, in which fires are prevented, and plantation
and reproduction are regularly undertaken, already
cover upwards of 90,000 square miles, besides which
there are 150,000 square miles of State forests, part
of which will sooner or later be brought within the
reserved area, and all of which is worked for the
benefit of the people, and of the public revenue.
Outside the reserves, the country folk are able to
obtain from the State, free of charge, timber, fire­
wood, and grass, while inside the reserves special
licences are required, subject, however, to the re­
cognition of all rights formally recognised at the
time of the first settlement.
A gross revenue of upwards of .£1,725,000 is
raised by the sale of, or by royalties on, timber
and other produce, and by the issue of permits
for grazing, or for the collection and sale of forest
produce, while the nett revenue amounts to upwards
of three-quarters of a million sterling.
The salt tax, against which complaints are made
more by professional agitators than by the people
who pay it, has been levied from time immemorial,
and is in fact the only impost collected from
 ^ -K C ^ R E S S OF T H E LAST F IF T Y Y E A R S
\%\i§^vqV of India who neither hold land, litigm jg^Lj
drink liquor, nor smoke opium. Indeed the annual
incidence of this tax is no more than 2|d. per head
of the population. Salt, moreover, is now cheapei
than it has been at any previous period in Indian
history, the tax having been reduced in 1907 to one
rupee or is. 4d. per maund of 82 lbs., while the
average annual consumption of this necessaiy of
life is 12 lbs. per head, or double what it was fifty
years ago.
Customs duties in India are imposed for
revenue only, and with no protective purpose. In
1893, owing to the heavy loss sustained by Govern­
ment in consequence of the fall in exchange, it
became necessary to re-impose the general duty of
5 per cent, on imports, from which cotton piece
goods and yarns were exempted. Three years
later these products were also subjected to a duty
of 3^- per cent., a countervailing excise being im­
posed on similar goods manufactured in the Indian
mills, in order to deprive the tax of a protective
character.
It is this position which makes India a counter
in the present controversy regarding the respec­
tive merits of Free Trade and T ariff Reform, and
it is true that the members of the Governor-
General’s Legislative Council who voted for the
countervailing excise duty, of whom the writer was.
one, consented thereto because of the necessity of
 MODERN INDIA
^ R ^ n a m la in in g in our greatest foreign possessioftJtLi
general adherence to that system of Free Trade
which still:obtains, and then obtained unchallenged,
in the United Kingdom.
It is a short way from customs to excise, and
it is not a little strange to read criticisms made
in this comparatively hard-drinking country, upon
the increase in the amount of revenue collected
under this head in India, from one of the most
sober populations in the world. Consequent upon
the improvement in wages and in the general con­
dition of the classes which consume intoxicating
drinks, they are able to spend much more than
they spent fifty years ago, and at the same time
to pay, as they do, a proportionately far higher
excise duty on what they consume than they for­
merly paid. In fact the greater part of the increase
in revenue is due to higher taxation under this
head, and to the suppression of illicit distilleries.
Nevertheless it will take many reports such as
that presented upon the liquor problem in Southern
Nigeria to persuade intemperate advocates of tem­
perance that the British Government did not
introduce liquor into India, and is not living
in a great measure upon gains ill-gotten by its
sale.
Indirect but valuable evidence of a general
advance in material prosperity is afforded by the
fact that India contains i 60,000 miles of postal
 :6gress of th e last f ift y years

€ ipi{ and 70,000 post-offices, while annually o^P1- ^

poo,000 letters and packets pass through the
Postal Department, which also manages 8000
Savings Banks, in which £10 ,0 00 ,00 0 are de­
posited, .and issues money orders to the respect­
able total of £25,000,000 a year. Again, there
are 69,000 miles of telegraph wires, over which
12,000,000 messages annually pass, and 7000 tele­
graph offices.
The expenditure on education has increased
from £250,000 in 1858 to ,£4,000,000 in 1907, and
criticisms directed against the alleged inadequacy of
this amount wholly ignore the relative conditions
of England and India, and absurdly adopt the
former, as a standard of comparison for the latter,
country. No figures are available in respect of
other Asiatic administrations, but it is extremely
unlikely that any other can show anything like such
satisfactory figures, and can compare in this respect
with our own record in India.
The public debt amounts to £246,000,000, of
which £177,0 00 ,0 00 have been incurred for rail­
ways, and £30,000,000, as elsewhere stated, for
irrigation works. As interest on the two latter
portions of the debt is charged against the services
concerned, which both show large profits, no charge
for interest in this behalf falls upon the taxpayer.
Apart from these remunerative services the debt of
India is only £38,000,000, or little more than half
 MODERN INDIA
U ^ vjll^ j/y e ar’s revenue, taking the annual incomdGuLi
^72,000,000. These are facts which more than
justify the statement of Lord St. Aldwyn, when
Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the revenues of
India are in better condition and better managed
than those of the United Kingdom. Indeed to
say this is to rate far too high the management
of our finances in Great Britain, which is adversely
affected by political and party considerations, from
which India is happily exempt.
On the 1st of April 1909, no less than 30,983
miles of railway had been opened, which car­
ried during the year 330,000,000 passengers and
64,000,000 tons of goods, the rates charged being
as low as ^d. a mile for passengers, and under Jd .
a ton per mile for goods. The railway adminis­
tration gives employment to 525,000 persons, of
whom over 508,000 are natives of India, and the
country saves ^100,000,000 per year, when the
cost of the railway service is compared with that
of the previously existing wretchedly inadequate,
terribly slow, and appallingly expensive methods
of transit.
The last-mentioned calculation does not, how­
ever, include the benefits afforded by the railways
in preventing famine and improving trade, and in
adding to the strategic strength of the country.
The capital outlay under this head is ^274,000,000,
and the nett earnings in 1908 were 4.33 per cent.
/ / / " ^ p m R E S S OF T H E LAST F IF T Y Y E A R S O y

ns amount, as against an average of 3 J ^

cent, profit on the capital invested in the British
lines. *
It is, of course, impossible to compare the
amount of the capital expenditure on railways with
that devoted to irrigation, because the extent of
land capable of irrigation at a remunerative outlay
is strictly limited, while there is hardly any limit to
the degree to which railways may be usefully con­
structed. Nevertheless the Government at present
contemplates an expenditure of some ^30,000,000
sterling on further irrigation works. These are of
two kinds, canals and tanks, the former of which
are cut off from great rivers, which, having their
origin in high mountain ranges, even in time of
drought possess an unfailing supply. Such rivers
have been utilised with most successful results, and
upon the most extensive scale, in the Punjab, the
United Provinces, and the Madras Presidency.
Tank irrigation is generally chiefly dependent
upon the local rainfall, or upon comparatively small
streams, which run dry in time of drought. In the
Madras Presidency alone there are no less than
60,000 such tanks, most of which, dating from the
time of native Indian rule, have been considerably
improved by the British Government. Though
called by the commonplace name of tanks, they are
in fact beautiful lakes, and a most pleasing feature
in the landscape.
Q
(fr^k
if 1I&4M MODERN INDIA
(c\j
V \|
x ^ ^ z A n addition to these two methods of irriga­
tion, wells are very extensively used in some
parts of India, and cultivators can obtain funds
for sinking such upon very favourable terms from
Government.
In the fifty years which have elapsed between
1858 and 1908, the value of imports and exports of
merchandise have increased from 25 and 14 millions
sterling respectively, to 115 and 86 millions ster­
ling ; that is to say, the volume of trade has more
than quintupled, and the external land trade has
more than doubled, while great cotton spinning,
weaving, jute, and coal industries have been born,
and have attained a healthy adolescence.
Cottage industries, of course, fell before the
impact of machine-fed competition from Europe,
but new manufactures appeared at the same
time in India, and up till the present day they
increase and multiply. Sir Theodore Morison, an
eminent authority, has calculated that in a single
generation the rate of increase has been in cotton
manufactures 400, in jute 500, and in woollen weav­
ing 50 per cent,, while the output of coal has multi­
plied ninefold, gold sixfold, petroleum thirtyfold,
and manganese seventyfold. It was the late Mr.
Justice Ranade, one of the Indian reform party,
who wrote that the transformation of India from
a purely agricultural to a partly trading and manu­
facturing country had begun.
\{ | | jP^ GRESS 0 F THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
j\ T / J ^ / T h e cultivation of tea and coffee has also ma^e
~~ great strides. There are under tea 536,000 acres,
upon which upwards of half a million labourers are
employed, and the produce of which is not less
than 230,000,000 lbs. per year, valued at nearly
,£7,000,000 sterling. India has become the chief
tea-producer of the world, and further recognition
than has yet been accorded is due to the planter, as
a pioneer of a great industry, a generous employer
of labour, and a valued auxiliary of his fellow-
countryman, the British administrator.
Reference has been made in previous chapters to
the condition of the people and the state of agricul­
ture ; but in view of the fact that the Bengali agita­
tors assert that the people of their own, are more
prosperous than those of any other, province, it may
be worth while to remark that while in the Punjab,
United Provinces, Bombay, Madras, Burma, and
Assam, profits on agriculture are chiefly reaped by
a prosperous peasantry, who cultivate the land for
themselves, it is in Bengal and, it is true, some
parts of the United Provinces, that most of the
profits of agriculture are collected by the landlord.
Indeed in Bengal pressure of population and com­
petition for land have forced up rents, so as to
leave only a bare margin of subsistence for the
tenant of a small holding.o
But how different the condition of even the
agriculturists of Bengal from that of cultivators in
 ' Gov \
/ j/ ix n
( I f W 2^ ' MODERN INDIA ^Q T
\ ^ v ^ ^ / t i m c of the Emperor Aurangzeb, “ when bfeocH
flowed in rivers, and the dead were unburied, when
millions d:ed of famine, and fathers” (probably as
humane and affectionate as they are in the present
day) “ were driven by hunger to sell their children,
buL were iorced to go without food, finding no one
to buy them.” These are the words of the con­
temporary writer, Nicolai Manucci, a perusal of
whose fascinating description of life under one of
the greatest of the Great Moguls, throws a flood of
light upon the vexed question whether there ever
was a golden age in India, and whether the inhabi­
tants vveie then happier, or at any rate had more
reasons for being happier, than they are at the
present time.
1
he average native of India of to-day consumes
more salt, sugar, tobacco, and other luxuries than
his predecessor of fifty years ago, and he eats
more food, and lives in a more comfortably fur­
nished habitation. House-to-house inquiries have
revealed these facts, which are on record for all
who want true statements and not inaccurate
criticisms.
Again, in the past fifty years India has absorbed
an average of ^126,000,000 a year of the precious
metals, an infallible proof of improved circumstances.
1 he piofessional classes certainly enjoy better in­
comes than they did, and the same may be said
without contradiction of those employed in the
 RESS OF THE LAST FIFTY YEARS
ment service, while the tenant, as a result of
our legislative enactments, possesses an increased
share of the profits of agriculture. The Landless or
labouring classes are fewer relatively than they are
in Britain, and the wages of skilled in a large, and
of unskilled labour in a fair, measure, have ad­
vanced in a greater ratio than the simultaneous
rise in the price of food. Labourers in years of
ordinarily good harvests are not hard pressed ; but
when prices rise they undoubtedly suffer, and but
for the system of famine prevention described in
Chapter IV., would succumb in large numbers, as
they did in the good old times before the advent
of the British administration, which is as fertile in
benefits to the peoples of India as it is unwisely
patient of misrepresentation at the hands of sedi­
tious agitators, who delude the ignorant masses of
the people.
Such are some, and only a few, of the salient
features of the prodigious improvement effected in
the condition of the Indian peoples in the short
period of half a century, and surely it is a classic
instance of the irony of history that a few de­
nationalised agitators can instil into the minds of
our people, ever easily misled and prone to harsh
criticism of their own servants in foreign lands,
doubts as to the benevolent intentions and trium­
phant achievements of their fellow-countrymen in
India.
!.( S f l MODERN INDIA V fiT ,

Lord Morley, in one of his speeches lately,

published in a little volume, which it is sincerely to
be hoped will replace the speeches of Burke as a
classic in India, says the presentation of the Indian
Budget in 1907 was almost, if not quite, the first
occasion upon which the British democracy in all
its full strength has been brought directly face to
face with the difficulties of Indian government in
all their intricacy, all their perplexity, all their
subtlety, and above all their enormous magnitude.
He told that Parliament, in which, to a previously
unparalleled degree, Indian affairs became the play­
thing of irresponsible and ill-informed politicians,
that for a long time to come, so far indeed as his
imagination could reach, India would be the theatre
of absolute and personal government. No other
form of rule has indeed hitherto succeeded in the
East. Experiments made in Turkey and Persia
are of too recent date, and have been by no means
completely successful, so that it is altogether too
early to say that they are any exception to the
general rule. Indeed, Lord Minto, in his speech
at the first meeting of the enlarged Legislative
Council, said, “ We have aimed at reform and the
enlargement of our Councils, not at the creation of
Parliaments.”
Lord Morley, who admits that he was an im­
patient idealist, and that he has even now some
sympathy with that temperament, to possessors of
 n\
( * C £ r G R E S S 01 T H E L A S T F I F T Y y e a r s ( j y w
as he says, many of the most tragic rh3 i ^
carriages in human history have been due, no
sooner had practical and first hand experience of the
Government of India, than he arrived at precisely
the same conclusion as that at which half a century-
earlier John Stuart Mill arrived.
Mill, with no little study and experience of
Indian affairs, saw that Britain was becoming
increasingly democratic, was convinced from his
extensive historical studies that no democracy could
govern a dependency with probity and wisdom, and
regarded with apprehension the prospect of Indian
affairs coming within the sphere of party intrigue
and Parliamentary interference. It was he who ably
vindicated the rule of the East India Company,
and drew up a memorandum of the improve­
ment in the administration of the country made in
the thirty years preceding its transference to the
Crown. In this able State paper he claimed and
proved that the more attention was bestowed and
the more light was thrown upon India and us ad­
ministration, the more evident it became that the
Government of that country had been not only one
of the purest in intention, but one ol the most bene­
ficent in act, ever known among mankind, and he
dwelt upon the happy independence of the adminis­
tration from Parliamentary influence and control.
He made no scruple of avowing his opinion that
democracy must come to grief in attempting to
(|( w ifr MODERN INDIA. (O T
govern India, and tiie experience of the last Parlia­
ment, in which a small group of sentimental and
theoretical politicians devoted themselves to oppos­
ing the Government of India in respect of the by
no means too stringent measures it took for the
repression of sedition, affords better proof than has
hitherto offered of the justification of his case and
of his unfavourable forecast. The fact is that de­
mocracy in Britain has hardly yet found its feet
and already India is a plank in the platform of the
Labour Party, which is itself all unwittingly the
cat’s-paw of the Congress Party in India. The
Brahmin agitators on the banks of the Ganges,
who regard the masses of their fellow-creatures as
hardly human, have joined hands with the delegates
of the Trades Unions and the Socialist apostles of
theoretical equality at Westminster. This was no
foreseen by Mill, in whose case, however, experi
ence did attain to something of prophetic strain
and surely such a phenomenon is another, and
one of the most significant, of the ironies o
history.
The conclusion at which Mill arrived, and which
Lord Morley evidently shares, is that adopted by
almost every person possessing any practical ac­
quaintance with the government of Orientals by
European races. It is not a comforting conclusion,
but it may be that since the fulfilment of Mill’s prc
phecy has been delayed for half a century, a savin'
ill J PROGRESS OF THE LAST FIFTY Y E A R S m f
\l®vs!^|Wmon-sense may be infused into the representa^^
~ fives of British democracy before our Empire as a
whole comes into collision with a great and growing
rival, and before our Indian Empire is destroyed by
endeavours to govern its multitudinous millions after
a fashion more or less suited to the inhabitants of
these small Atlantic islands.
Signs are not wanting that the hold of senti­
mental altruism and doctrinaire philanthropy upon
the British electorate is for the time being, at any
rate, much weakened, and the Viceroy, Lord Minto,
not, it may quite safely be assumed, without the
approval of Lord Morley, has admitted, just as
these pages go to print, that the British adminis­
tration has from a chivalrous unwillingness to
interfere in any form with freedom of speech tole­
rated too long the dissemination of revolutionary
literature. An Act has now been passed contain­
ing more drastic provisions than those of Lord
Lytton’s Press Act, which was unfortunately re­
pealed, since which the unbridled licence of the
vernacular newspapers of Bengal and the Deccan,
passing all bounds and secure from all interference,
has brought the administration into contempt. R e­
pressive measures passed into law in the last four
years, and held in reserve, are also being brought
into force, and unless the hand at the helm falters,
of which there is no sign, and of which, happily,
there is no probability, the ship of State will be
r.l So):j MODERN INDIA ^ 1 .
X''~^b¥bught safely into harbour, and the happiness of
the great majority will not be sacrificed to the vague
ambitions, ignorant ideals, and wholly unjustified
discontent of a numerically insignificant minority of
the inhabitants of India.
/•i s'---

|1|' <§L
© g, ;

IN D EX
°0
A Army, expenditure on, 90-92, 99,
• 100, 101
Abdul Rahman, Ameer of Af- ----- health of, 123
glianistan, 225, 226 ----- hill stations of, 123, 124
Administration, further employ- ----- Imperial Service Corps,
ment of natives in, see Natives 94, 95
----- criticisms of, 60-66 ----- from imperial standpoint,
---- - see also under India 91, 92
Advisory Councils of Notables, ----- Lord Kitchener’s admin is-
223 tration of, 90, 91, 9S, 99, 101
Afghan War, 53 ----- Lord Kitchener’s redistribu-
Afghanistan, 51, 53, 54, 97, 107, tion scheme, 102, 103
108, 225, 226 ----- Lord Kitchener’s and Lord
----- frontier and Russia, 105, Curzon’s difference regarding,
106, 108 85-89
— - King of, 168 ----- method of general adminis-
Age of Consent Act, 180, 199 tration, 85, 86, 9S, i n
Agitators and national religion, ----- method of recruitment, 94
163, 164, 170, 17 1, 198, 204 ----- numbers of Europeans and
----- and social reform, 197, 198 natives before Mutiny, 96
Agriculture, 7, 194, 243 ----- present strength, 99, 106
Aix-Ia-Chapelle, peace of, 48 ----- Presidency, early days of,
Akbar, Emperor, 235 95) 96
Allahabad University, 154 rateof soldiers’ pay, 93, 94,
Amboyna, 48 101
Amherst, Lord, 51 ----- Royal Commission on pro-
Anglo-Oriental Mahomedan Col- portion of Europeans to natives
lege, 153 after Mutiny, 98, 106
Anglo-Russian Convention, 54, ----- transfer to Crown, 98
100, 104, 107, 108, 109, 224 ----- transport of, 91, 92
Animal life of India, 20-35 Arundel, Sir A. T,, 114
Anushilan San.iti, 162 ; vow of, Arya-Samaj, 10
163 Arya-Vedic College, 153
Arcot, 48 Asoka, 9
Army,attempts todebauch loyalty Assam, labour 111, 5 6 ,112 ,115 , '43
0£ 97 ’ Assassinations and bomb out-
----- capitation charges, 94 rages, 166
----- Cardwell system, 93 Auckland, Lord, 51
----- comforts of troops, 93, 94 Aurangzeb, 47, 244
251
 * .p .
if if2)5 INDEX V fiT
B c
Baghdad Railway scheme, 55, Cable rates, 80
225 . Calcutta, 122
Baluchistan, 223 ----- University of, 154
Bande Mataram, 16 1-16 3 Calicut, 48
Baroda, 234 Canning, Lord, 51, 59
----- Gaekwar of, 50, 218 Capital, British, in India, 58, 6 1-
----Grekwar of, put forward as 63, 80-83
example by agitators, 223, 223 Capital of India, 122, 123
Bassetn, Sheik of, 225 Cardwell system, 93
Batavia, 48 Cashmere and army, 9?
Bears, 23 Caste, 15-19
Beasts, indiscriminate rewards for ----- the great distinction, 196,
slaughter of, 21, 37, 41, 42, 44, 197, 204
• 45 Cavagnari, Sir Louis, 53
Bengal, 112, 115 Census, 1901, 17 ; 1st, 72
army, 95 Central Asian Railway, 105
----- army and mutiny, 96, 97 Central Hindu College, Benares,
---- and reforms, 180 153
Bepin Chandra Pal, 128,161, 164, Chesney, Sir George, 102
168, 173 Chinese Opium War (1842), 51, 32
Birds, 28-30 Chitral, 53, 54
— prohibition of export of Christians, 11, 12
feathers, 31, 37 Chumbi Valley, 109
— protection of, 36, 57 Civil Service, origin, 127
Bison, 28, 37, 40, 44, 46 ----- personnel of, 128, 129, 132,
Blomfield case, 157 133
Bombay, 243 ----- payment of, 129, 130, 133,
----- army, 95, 96 134
~ University, 154 ----- necessity for knowledge of
Bonsla, Rajah, 50 vernaculars in, 128, 142, 143,
Boycott, 76, 160, 165, 174 i 53) 154
Brackenbury, Sir Henry, 102 Climate, 2, 3
Brad laugh, Mr., 60, 65 Clive, 48, 49, 95, 127
Brahmanas, 8, 9 Cochin, 37, 216
Brahmins, 160, 171, 175, 177,196, ----- game preservation in, 37, 39
197, 200, 201 Coffee industry, 243
Brahmo-Samaj, 10 _ Collector magistrates, 129, 136,
British Indian Steam Navigation 139, 140, 175, 232
Co., 224 Collen, Sir Edwin, 102
British residents, see under Native ----- and army transport, 91, 92,
States 103
Buddha, 8, 9 ----- on causes of mutiny, 96
Buftalo, 26, 27 Commensality, 21 r, 212
Burma, 51, 52, 243 Commerce and Industry, Depart-
Burmese War— 1st, 51 ; 2nd, 51 ; ment of, 80
3rck 53 Condition of working-classes, 79-
Burnes, Sn Alexander, 51 81, 243-245
 INDEX
r. \ j W / # . 64 Digby, Mr. William, 60 ,6 5 V 3 1 1
\ v S 7 f anPy> 101 . Dilke, Sir Charles, and
X ^ T s j^ k h d natives in public sendee, army, 9 1, 100, 105
I 35j 136 ; District boards and municipa-
----- and self-government, 142 1 lities, 119 , 120, 14 1, 142
----- schisms in, 173, 174 ; District units, 117 , 136, 137
----- and reforms, 179, 192, 193 Dost Mohamed, 51, 53
----- and police, 233 ]“ Drain,” 60, 61, 63
----- and Labour Party, 248 ; Dubois, Abb6, 209, 229
Coolie labour, 56, 63, 64, 72-76 | Dufterin, Lord, 53
----- action of Colonies in regard ' Dupleix, 48
t0> 7 2 ^ 6 Durand Convention, 54
Coote, 49 Dutt, Mr. R. C., 72, 207
Cornwallis, Lord, 127
Cotton, Sir H.,New India, 169,170
Creagh, General Sir O’Moore, 104 E
Criminal Law Amendment Act,
166 Eagles, 29, 30
Crocodiles, 32, 35 Eastern Bengal, 112
Crooke, Mr.,208, 229 Education, 114
Crows, 29 ----- amongst Mahomedans, 148
Curzon, Lord, Viceroyalty of, 54, ----- as cause of unrest, 156
58, h i ----- control of students, 150, 152,
----- action on N.W . Frontier, 55 153, 156
----- Act regulating coolie im- — cost of making graduates, 154
migration, 56 ----- difficulties of, 149, 150
----- army, 85-89 ----- expenditure on, 239
•----- Bill prohibitingexport of -------- female, 198
feathers, 3 1, 37 ----- higher, 144, 145, 148, 149,
----- education, 146-148 152
■----- and famines, 56 ----- necessity for refuting calum-
------and finance, 55 nies, 150-152
------and sanitation, 206 ----- necessity for denominational
Curzon Wyllie, Sir W., murder teaching, 153, 156, 170, 17 1
of, 166, 167 ----- neglect o f vernaculars, 148
Customs duties, 237 ----- numbers o f graduates, 154
----- numbers literate in English.
192, 193
D ----- primary, 145, 146
----- proportion of population re-
Dadabhai Naoroji, 60,65 ceiving, 146, 147, 154, 155
Dalhousie, Lord, 51, 52, 96, 97 ----- secondary, 147, 148
Danish settlements in India, 48 ----- superintendent, municipal
Decentralisation, 1 13—1 1 5, 117 - schools, on, 154
12 1 ----- text-books, 150
----- Commission, 114 , 115 , 144* Elective principle, 14 1, J42, 179.
17 4 ,17 5 ,2 3 1 18 3 ,18 4 ,19 1
Department of Commerce and Elephants, 24-26, 37, 40, 43, 44
Industry, 80 1 Elgin, Lord, 54
/T Z ^ \*^ \ <j
l ( B '54'i INDEX \CT
Master of, 60, 70, 1 5 5 I Herat, 52, 105
-----— on troops maintained by Hewett, Sir John, 168
native States, 95 ; Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 126,
Emigration of coolie labour to i 240
colonies, 74 : Hillmen, 34, 35, 42. 43
Ethnology, 15, 16 Hills, Government visit to, 122,
Europeans in India, law regard- 1 123
ing, 140, 141 Hinterland of Gulf and Russia,
Excis^duties, 238 107, 108
Hippopotamus, 27, 2S
Idolkar of Indore, 50
F Home charges, 61, 62
Factory legislation, 77, 82, 83 H ornets"^ 5 ‘
amine, 71 Hume, Mr., attempted murder of,
----- Commission, 71 ^ r
pievention code, 56-58, 203, Hunter, Sir William, misquoted,
“ 4o 62 65
Fayrer, Sir Joseph, 96, 97 Hyderabad contingent, 96, 218
F 1nances, see under India Hyder Ali, 50
Fish and fishing, 33
Flora, 3, 4, 34
Forests, 3, 34, 1 13, 121, 235, 236 j
----- revenues from, 236
- — reservation of, 38,39,235, 236 j bex 28, 46
Fort St. George, 47 Ibis, 29
h raser, Mr. David, 105 Immigration of coolie labour, Act
French in India, 48, 49 to control, 56
in 1 ersia, 55 Imperial Service Corps, 94, 95
Imports and exports, 76, 83, 84
G ----- comparison of, 62, 63, 242
India, area of, 1-3
Game laws, need for, 36-40,44-46 ----- area under cultivation, 234,
----- preservation of, 36, 46 235
----- licences, 37, 38 ----- death-rate of, 5, 7, 72
Gladstone, on representative ----- early administration under
_government, 190 1 John Company, 47, 48, 247
Goat, 28, 37 , -----early invaders, 1, 2, 47,48
Gokhale, Mr., 173 ----- finances of, 6 1 , 1 1 1 - 1 13,120,
“ Golden Age,’ ’ 244 I 12 1,12 4 -12 6 ,13 6
Government of India Act, n o j ----- flora, 3, 4
Governor-General, see India ■ ----- French in, 48, 49
Grey, Sir Edward, 107 ----- Government of India and
Gwalior, 95 Provincial Governments, re­
spective functions, 113
H ----- Governor-General, powers
of, i n , 1 12
Haileybury College, 127 ----- Governor-General’s Council,
Hardinge, Lord, 51 1 1 1 ,1 1 2 ,1 3 2 ,1 8 6
f( W
V» \
% IND
EX
f g f ia / Governor-General’s Coun- Judicial administration, sec I n p ifl
6W j
native member, 18 1, 182 Jungle, delights of life in, 34, 35,
-=^tjovernors’ andLieut.-Gover- 45
nors’ salaries, 1 12
----- Governor in Council Con- K 0
stitution, 115 , 1 16
----- Governor in Council Con- Kali, 162, 163, 180
stitution reformed, 180, 183, ----- hymn to, 164
184 Kashmir, game preservation in,
----- inhabitants of, chief types, 37> 38
15, 16, 42, 43 Keir Hardie, Mr., 69, 192
----- judicial administration of, on troops maintained by
137-140 native States, 95, 217
----- languages of, 12 -15 , 229 ----- alleged encouragement of
----- later administration of, n o - sedition by, 168
122, 229 ----- on Indians’ food, 201, 202
----- occupations of peoples, 7, 8 ----- “ India,” 168, 169
----- population, 4-6, 216 Khalsa College of Sikhs, 153
----- relations of, with foreign Kitchener, Lord, army adminis-
States, 110, 1 1 1 , 224 tration, 90, 91, 98, 99, 101
----- religions of, 9 -12 ,20 4 ,229 ----- differences with Lord Curzon,
----- transfer to Crown, 52 85-89
----- visit of Government of, to ----- redistribution scheme, 102,
hills, 122, 123 103
India House, Highgate, 153 ----- Staff College at Quetta, 103
Indian Councils Act, 1 16 ,17 4 ,175, Koweit, 55, 225
178, 1 80, 188 Krasnovodsk, 105
----- allocation of seats, 193, 194,
*95 . , T
----- first elections under, 1 9 1 , 193 ^
----- manifesto against, 191, 192
----- regulations regarding, 191 Labour in India, 56, 63- 65, 73~
Indian Universities Commission, 76, 79, 8°
146 Lalcaca, murder of Dr., 166
Indus, 1, 2 Lally, 49
Industries, 7, 8,76-78, 81, 82,242, Land, revenue derived from, 65.
243 6 6 ,6 8 -7 1,12 4 ,12 5 ,2 3 4 ,2 3 5
----- new, 64, 66, 76, 81, 83, 84, ----- system, 66, 67 234, 235
242 ----- permanent settlement, 67, 68
Insects, 33, 34, 45 ----- temporary settlement, 68, 69
Investments, profit on, 80, 81, Languages of India, 13 15, 224
239-241 ----- necessity for knowledge of,
Irrigation, 58 ,81,121,234,239 ,241 128, 142, 143, 153, 15 4 ,2 11
Lapse, doctrine of, 216
Lawrence, Lord, 53
J Lawrence, Stringer, 48, 95
Jainism, 9 Legends of forests, 34, 35
Japan, 158 Legislation for protection of ten-
Jeypur, Maharaja of, 222 ants, 65, 67, 170, 235, 245
(if JP sfe] in d ex ( o t

Councils reformed, Morley, Lord, increase in

Xx< ^ ^ r J I04 pay, 93-
iassa, 109 ----- Indian Councils Act, 116,
Loyalty, 172, 173, 220-222 174, I75, I7g
Lvall^Sir^A^frcd
i.yall, Sir Alfred, 8 ; ^quoted,
, a 225, ----- 190, reforms,
191, 195178, 184, 186, 1S8,
t „ T , ----------- ruling chiefs, 220
Lytton, Lord, 53 ----- students, 156
Mountains, 1, 3
MozufFerpore, 166
M Municipalities, 1 19, 120, 141, 142
Muscat c c
Macaulay, Lord, 48, 49, 144 Mutiny, 52, 53, 96, 97
—- Minute, 144 Mysore, 78, 216, 221, 230
Macdonald, Mr. Ramsay, 192 ----- gold mines, 78
Macdonald, Miss Frederika, 24 ----- Maharaja of, 214, 218
MacDonell, Lord (Sir Antony), 71 H
Macedonian question, 106, 107
Macnaghten, Sir William, 51 N
Madras, 142, 243
----- army of, 95, 96 Nana Sahib, 50
— University, 154 Narendo Nath Gossain, 166
Alag^trate5, 117, 230-232 Natal and coolie labour, 73, 74
Mahomedans, 1 1 1 2 , 18, 13 1, 132, Native States, 37, 39, 44, 229
’ 69, 1 72, 1 75j 184-186, 191 ----- area of, 214
Mahratta wars, 50, 96 ----- British residents in, 21S-
Mahrattas, 17, 49, 50, 17 1, 172 220
Malcolm, Sir John, 152 ----- control of British Govern '
Manipur, 21C _ ment over, 223
Manucci, Nicolai, 244 ----- foreign relations of, 215,
Members of Parliament and 216, 224
agitators, 67, 69, 70, 13 1, 134, ----- internal administration, 217
15 '. 157, 158, 248 227
-—; and Mahomedan powers,106 ----- loyalty of, 220-222
Midleton, Lord, 86 ----- number and antiquity of, 21.
Mill, John^Stuart, 233, 247, 248 ----- population, 214, 216
Aiming,,78 ----- preservation of individuality
Mmto, Lora, 57, 59, 89, i n , 113 , of, 219, 220, 229
22°> 23 * . ----- princes, characteristics of-
Mixed marriages, 2J2, 213 226,227
Moguls, 47, 49, 50 Native troops, 52
Monkeys, 23 Natives, further employment of,
Monson, Sir Theodore, 242 in public service, 64, 114 , 128,
Morley, Lord, 59, 60, 62, 76 130-135, 160, 178, 182, 183
and army, 87-89 ----- and Europeans employed,
----- decentralisation, 113 , 114, comparison, 230, 231
23 r Natives of India, condition of,
difficulties of Indian Gov- compared with that of natives
ernment, 146 of other countries, 64, 65

•*
 INDEX

C. \ 212 Protection of Wild B ird s2^ 4 , k i ,,

\ y > 5 5 f"Qrp-West Frontier, 5 4 , 99, 105 36,37 kJ J L ^ a
':i z Province, 55, 115 Public debt, 239
Nundo Lai Banerji, 166 Puchi-gichi, 33
Punjab University, 154

O Q
Octroi, ,142
• Opium, 124, 125, 237 Quetta, Staff College, 193
Orenburg, 105
Oudh, 49, 97, ri2 , 115

p Railways, 58, 61, 234, 239-241

Rajputana, 214, 215
Pal, Babu Bepin Chandra, 128, Ramtanu Lahiri, life of, 197
16 1, 164, 167, 168, 173 Ranade, Mr. Justice, 197
Parsees, n , 12, 17 1 Reforms, 177, 195; see also Social
Partition, 157-159 , 165 Religions, 9 -12, 204, 229; see
Patiala and army, 95 also under Agitators
Persia, 54, 55,6 2 ,10 6 ,10 7,10 8 ,225 Representative government, 97,
----- revolution in, 55, 105, 108 1 4 1 , 142, I77» I 79, 1 S4, 19 1-19 4 ,
Persian Gulf, 55, 224 246
Peshwa, 50 ----- unfitness of India for, 177,
Tig-sticking, 37 179> 19° . I 9 I> 2 46, 248, 249
Pindaris, 51 ----- demand for, 1 77,180 ,189 ,19 0
Plague, 6, 7 ----- Mahomedans and, 184-186
«•=■ Planters, 56, 63, 243 Reptiles, see Snakes
Plassey, 49, 95 Revenues, see under India,
Police, 135, 136, 233 finances of
----- lack of support of, 156, 157, Rhinoceros, 26-28
233 Richards, Sir Erie, 181
Pollock, General, 51 Ripon, Lord, 53, 14 1, 142
Poona, 132 Rites and ceremonies, 200-206
Population, 4-6, 216 Roberts, Lord, 53, 86, 102
Portuguese in India, 47, 48 Rural boards, 1 18, 119
Postal Department, 239 Russia, 54, 55, 100, 104, 105, 107,
----- routes, 239 108
Presidency armies, 95, 96 ----- Czar’s travels in East, 104
' Press Act, new, 176, 249 ----- in Persia, 55, 100, 106, 107,
----- Lord Lytton’s, 249 108
Press, native, 158, 159, 165, 170-
172, 176 s
----- Bande M alarum , 161
----- B en gali, 161 1 St. Aldwyn, Lord, 126, 240
----- San jiban i, 160 ! Sale, General, 51
—— Statesman, 16 1, 162 ; Salisbury, Lord, 62
Prosperity, increase in last fifty ! Salt tax, 236, 237
years, 238 ' Savings banks, 239
R
, ' G° i> \ • r -----1— -------- ' "TT
■ n
i ( M 8)* in dex VfiT
of State’s Council, i io, Teheran, 107, io8

— appdntnrent Indian member, T e S S e g is la d o n for protection

Sedition, 132, sec also Native Press 1
Thebaw, King ° ; 35’ " 4S
Shah S h ^ 4 ’ l68"172 ?'ib6t’ I07’ I09
Shanghai, 51 Tlger^’ 2?> 21’ 35, 37, 40
Sher Ali, S5 — 7 lndlsc™ m a te rewards for
Siberirn Railway, 105 x i? ' » l h F
Sikh War, si 5 k Sl£S h> i64>
“ Sikh’s Sacrifice,” 161 162 T i S f 0 Sulta-n’ S°
Sikhs, 10 ’ ’ 2 ?irah cafnl ? ^ 54
Simla, 122 Todas of Nilgins, 27
Sindhia of Gwalior, 50 d u !triL als° In‘
T m S p S „f
Snakes, 31, 32, 40-42 Tl? nS^ 1 and coolle lab°ur, 74,

W o « S ,m4'? 43 ' e" rdS T? ” »'

— deaths from snake bite, 40-42 j -----■ Maharaja of, 214, 21 c
Soda
Social ' 1T
life, 0™ ? ’ 2rthe2 1?dividing
caste ■r Turkestan,
Turkey, 106Russia inf’ioo5
i, • Turkish Arabia, 54
Brahmins, 200-203 Turtles and tortoises, 32
----- amongst lower classes, 203,
204, 207
----- death ceremonies, 206 U
-----Hindu system, 199, 200 n
----- marriage ceremonies, 199,206 Lnr®st> contributory causes to,
—— - marriage ideals, 203 r 5b 1 5a,>,J 74
-7— 7 use of intoxicants, 197, 203 Tt reuiedies, 174-176
Social reform, 197-199 Upper Burma, 53
South African War, Indian troops utomsky, Pnnce Esper, 104
for, 58, 59
•-----Africa Bill, 75 y
Staff College at Quetta, 103
Standard of living, 80, 243, 245 Vasco da Gama, 48
Surendra Nath Banerji, 161, 164, Vedas, 8
191 Vernaculars, sec Languages
Svadeshi movement, 76, 159, 165 Viceroy and Secretary of State,
Svaraj, 157, 159, 160, 165 " respective parts in Government’
158
Vultures, 30, 31
T
Tabriz, 108
Tapir, 26 w
Taylor, Messrs. John, & Sons, 78 Warren Hastings, 49, r,
Tea-planting, 56, 63, 80, 243 Wellesley, Lord, 51
IT W r! IN D E X V fil9 »

Field-Marshal Sir George, 23 ; rhinoceros, 26, 27 ; tapir,

X^ ^ , I 0 2 2 6 ; buffalo, 26, 27 ; hippo-
W idow , re-marriage,199, 200 potamus, 27, 28 ; wild goat, 28 ;
Wood, Field-Marshal Sir Eve- sparrows, 2 8 ; crows, 28, 29;
lyn, 52, 96 kites, 29 ; parrots, 29 ; pigeons,
Woodcock, 29 29 ; doves, 29 ; sand-grouse, 29;
Working classes, 79-81, 243-245 pea-fowl, 2 9 ; jungle-fowl, 29 ;
partridge, 29 ; plovfer, 2 9 ;
snipe, 29; quail, 29; woodcock,
Y 29 ; gulls, 29 ; tern, ^99 peli-
Yakub Khan e , “ ” ?» 29 • cormorants, 2 9 ;
’ 3J eagle, 29, 30 ; vultures, 30 ;
teal, 31 ; duck, 31 ; sw'ans, 31 ;
Z geese, 31 ; python, 31 ; cobra,
31 ; hamadryad, 31 ; krait, 3 1 ;
Zoology bison, 20, 2S ; elephant, Russell’s viper, 31 ; crocodiles,
2°, 24, 25, 26 ; ibex, 20, 28 ; 32 ; turtles and tortoises, 32;
antelope, 20 : lion, 20 ; tigers, frogs, 32 ; newts, 32 ; sharks,
2 0 ; deer, 20 ; wild pig, 20 ; 32; saw-fish, pike, sea-horses,
leopards, 22 ; panthers, 22 ; stingrays, devil-fish, eels, cat-
hyenas, 22 ; wolves, 2 2 ; uogs, fish, carp, mahseer, hilsa, perch,
22; jackals, 22 ; foxes, 22 ; mullet, bream, mackerel, tunny-
otters, 2 2 ; bears, 23 ; monkeys, fish, 3 3 ; insects, 33

TH E END

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