A DEMOCRATIC INDIA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 116, 19 May 1930, Page 11

A DEMOCRATIC INDIA

'MASSES QUITE.CONTENT'

ADMINISTRATOR'S ANSWER

(By Sir Michael O'Dwyer.)

(Copyright.)

Our Government in India to-day is not only faced with seditious, revolutionary, anti-British agitators in India, with a hostile- 'Press both in England and India (where it is often subsidised by Russia), but also with gross misunderstanding and prejudice by a section of the people of Britain.

How often I have heard, while talking with the rising young politicians in the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, such meaningless cliches as "Why don't we let India govern herself?" "What right have wo in India?" "Give India to the Indians," "Britain lias done nothing but use India for her own ends. Why should we not give India to tho Indians?" Why not, indeed! I doubt if one in every hundred of theso young men, or any other person who criticises tho British Government iii India, has any knowledge of India— save that, of course, which has. been supplied by Indian students''iji England, or in tho columns of anti-Brit-ish papers. -The most amazing fact to me is that the British Government is content to sit still while these slanders are propagated and while this type of misunderstanding grows. ' I am. going to give here, as simply as possible, the main outlines of the Indian problem, and by. so doing I hope I may perhaps leave my readers with a less hostile attitude to our Indian Government, and a move reasonable and impartial outlook on our affairs in India. • ■ ,

LIFETIME OF SEKVICE.

_ I have spent the greater part of my life in India—thirty-four years in all, and served in. nearly every part of it, beginning as an assistant magistrate and ending as the Governor of the Punjab. During that time I have been able to study nearly every aspect of Indian life from the point of view of the rural masses—96 per cent, of the population. For it is the masses who count in India, and not the small band of politically-minded Indian intelligentsia. During those thirty-four years I have noticed no very great change in the mentality of the great mass of Indian people.

Thero lias been, however, a very marked change in the attitude of the higher and educated castes, who, having acquired some knowledge of Western ideas and culture, have assimilated and partly copied our ideas of democracy,'- self-government, etc., regardless of the fact that such theories arc not applicable in every country, and hitherto have never been applied in India.

Let me point out first of all, that owing to caste, literacy has in the past been reserved to a chosen few. However much the British Government may have desired to extend it' t6 the masses, the higher castes succeeded in. getting most of the funds available for their own higher education. Consequently to-day only 7 per cent, of tho total population of India, is literate; only one man in every ten can write his name, and only one woman in every hundred. These facts are given to indicate that the discontented section in India, that is a section, of literate or Westernised Indians, is a very small one. The peasant, when left to himself, is everywhere pro-British. For the first time in the history of India he has ,been able to enjoy peace and security. His lands have been irrigated, railways and roads built, primary schools opened, hospitals and dispensaries established. These social services are the creation of the British Government, but their expansion has been hampered by lack of funds.

LAND VALUES EISE,

A fact worth mentioning here is that the price of agricultural laud in the Punjab has increased in value from five shillings to twenty-five pounds an acre siuco the British rule in India. The capital value of the land in the Punjab was less than five, million pounds in 1848. To-day its value is eight hundred million pounds. The groat mass .of Indian people arc concerned primarily with the essentials of life, and these'essentials have benn cared for. and provided l)y the British Government on a scale unparallod in the history of their land. It

i.s a section of tho so-called intelligentsia who proclaim tho, wrongs committed by tho Government which has clone so much for tho benefit of India. In the words of Lord Tennyson, "The shallows murmur, but tho" deeps are dtinib." These hostile critics profess tho Western idea of democracy. There is nothing wrong iii this if it were genuine. But the Westernised Indian wishes, for his own ends, to apply only the catch words of democracy to India. He is not at heart a democrat; if ho wore, how could he condemn sixty millions of untouchables to hereditary servitude'? Democracy for India in its present state is a. contradiction in terms. ,

INDIA NO NATION.

Democracy pro-supposes a nation. There can bo no Government of the people by the people if there is no sense of nationality, common ideals and traditions.

Is India a, nation? Has a land of throe* hundred and twenty millions of people, drawn from every race known to Europe and Aski—Dravidian, Aryan, Scythian, Mongol, Semitic, etc., speaking 122 different languages and following every creed known to the world —; any sense of nationalism, any senso of unity? Europe (outsido Russia) with an equal population and area, is much nearer being ti homogeneous nation than the Indian people are. The predominant religion of India, Hinduism, is incompatible with 'democracy, for it is 'based on the inequality 'of men. Brahraanitmi, the highest and dominant caste, Ims created sixty million, "untouchables." These men arc hereditary outcasts—forbidden the use of the main streets' of a town or to draw water from the imblic wells, and compelled to live in hovels outside the towns and villages of the higher castes. I do not think tlie people of England realise to what depths, of degradation the "untouchables" are subjected. These "pariahs" of society are even chased from tho temples and the schools, their shadow defiles and their presence within a certain distance is a pollution. So strong is the caste system in India, that educated Indians, men holding high positions in His Majesty's Government, have deemed it necessary to wash after shaking hands with me

RELIGIOUS ANTAGONISM

Besides these "untouchables" or outcasts there are some two thousand subcastes in the Hindu religion, each,cut off from social intercourse with the rest, such as marrying or eating with those of another subcasto.

Added to the internal strife which exists in Hinduism, thoro is the racial and religious antagonism which exists between Hindu and. Mohammedan. Seven centuries of conflict, during which the invaders hold sway, have so embittered Muslim and Hindu, that any genuine fusion between the two is impossible. Ou only one occasion have they over combined. Gandhi in 1921 tried to unite Hindu and Mohammedan in a concerted attack against the British on the ground that both religions wcro threatened by a "Satanic' 1 Government.

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To-day a powerful section of Indian politicians arc setting themselves to wreck the work which the British Government has taken one hundred, and fifteen years to accomplish. These Indian Swarajists, so far from showing a spirit of co-operation and responsibility, have done all in their .power, to abuse the opportunities given thorn.for self-government, and they have now-the insolence to demand Dominion, status and to threaten revolution and Civil disobedience if it is withheld. Fortunately, theso Swarajists, though the most vocal, do not represent the whole of the educated classes, but having control of the Press and the platform they claim, though with no semblance of the truth, to be the voice of India.