BRITAIN IN INDIA.

Evening Star, Issue 10510, 31 December 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

BRITAIN IN INDIA.

HER MISSION IN THE EAST. DEFEATED BY CASTE. [Julian Hawthorne, in the ‘ Cosmopolitan.’] The East India Company, founded in IGOO, was in 1858 superseded by the English Crown. During the intervening period English India had gradually and insensibly come into existence. In the beginning there had been no anticipation of an English Empire in India. Sometimes a little war; sometimes a negotiation ; hero the genius or ambition of an individual, there a choice of alternatives—in one way and another course was laid upon course until at last there stood the mighty structure, with England’s flag flying from its summir. But in its building there -had’ never been anything like the deliberate, premeditated purposes shown, for example, in Cecil Rhodes’s African transactions. Had England, 150 years ago, been offered the empire as it now stands she would probably have declined so huge and perilous a responsibility. The population of this aggregation known as India is to-day 300,0001000. The land which they live on is equal to the area of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Much of it is uncullivatable ; much yields crops only under artificial irrigation. The soil in other places has become exhausted by overuse without manures. The methods of native agriculture are primitive and uneconomic. Finally, at intervals of a decade or so there is a failure of the monsoon—that ia, no rain falls. Then those regions which depend on rain alone for their crops cease to produce, and there is “ scarcity.” The regions cultivated by irrigation are for awhile unaffected, and the enhanced value of their grain brings them a temporary prosperity. But presently the rivers and the tanks, from which water for irrigation was drawn, dry up ; and then the scarcity becomes famine all over those districts where the monsoon has failed. In some places the monsoon has not failed, and there all is well.

There are two annual crops in India—the Kharif and the Rabi. The former is of inferior grade and is used for native consumption ; the other is for export. They correspond to the periods following the spring and the autumn monsoons. During the rest of the year India is barren and unproductive, CLIMATE ALMOST UNENDURABLE. India is hounded on the north by mountains, and there are mountainous regions elsewhere; but India proper is an enormous plain of mud and jungle. In this plain the climate during a great part of the year is almost unendurable to Europeans. To keep alive they must go to the mountains. The English population cf India consists of soldiers and Civil servants; no one selects India as a residence voluntarily. Of the army, 70,000 strong, 40 per cent, are incapacitated by venereal diseases, due to the legislation enforced by the “Exeter Hall” influence in the English Parliament. The Civil servants are superannuated at the age of 65. and are then sent Home on a pension, which they live to enjoy not more than two years on an average. The constitutions of all but . one man in a thousand are injured or -destroyed by the Indian climate.

There are not nearly enough Civil servants in India to carry on the administration'of the country; it becomes necessary to employ native assistants. These men are intelligent and occasionally trustworthy ; but they require strict supervision. The lower grades of native officials are uniformly dishonest and inefficient ; the police are proverbially corrupt and lax. In the south the Bengalese are restless and seditious, liars and vain ; eager for offioe, and trustworthy in nothing. In spite of all this, native officials must be employed, since no alternative exists. Besides, it has in a measure been the policy of the Home Government to entrust the administration as much as possible to native hands, in order that India might finally learn to rnn itself. Bat this policy has more often proved disastrous than successful, Self-government in India seems hopeless. Of the population of India, 7 per cent, of the males and a little over 1 per cent, of the females know bow to read and write. Of these percentages the majority belong to the lower castes. The higher oastes consider it beneath their dignity to learn. Many of them strongly desire to be educated, but the influence of caste restrains them. Caste declares education bad form; and whoever disregards caste in India is anathema; his or her position-resembloe that of the person excommunicated in the middle ages. . There were originally four great castes; these :by subdivisions - have now increased until they are estimated to.nnmber half a million. Each caste has its peculiarities; they may nob intermarry; eating food prepared by one of another caste is often forbidden ; objects touched by one must not be handled by another; and so on. For the English to interfere with these regulations would be fatal to the peace of the country. The English have declared themselves to be above caste, and within limitations the natives acquiesce; but they will permit no meddling with caste rules between themselves. It was the pollution of caste caused

by greased cartridges, that brought on the mutiny. Tho difficulty of dealing with people thus hedged about and .encumbered is unimaginable; the_ only remedy is to cure them of the caste disease. But though they themselves can often be brought to recognise the burden of caste, they lack resolution to throw it off. Here and there its virnlence seems to abate,.but the only thing that finally eradicates it is acceptance of Christ!a lily. Under English administration India’s population has more than doubled. The checks and drains upon increase have been stopped ; no more internecine wars; no more infanticide or suttee ; no more unrestrained raging of .pestilence; no more indifference to mortality from famine. The noblesse oblige of civilisation could not permit these. But though humanity be appeased, nature suffers; the soil will no longer keep the people. There were none too few at first, there are twice too many for comfort and oven for safety now. India is a country whose existence depends on agriculture ; practically the whole population is agricultural by birth and breeding. The exports are wheat, oil, opium, rioe, cotton, tee, indigo, hides, and jute. If, therefore, her soil ceases to bear, or bears too little to support her people, she has no recourse ; and at every turn the lives of more than four times the population of the United States are involved. Governing such a country is obviously no sinecure. But Sinbad, having suffered the Old Man of the Sea to get on his shoulders, must carry him as best he may till the end. India’s native condition.

What was the condition of India before England had her ? Like Europe to-day, she was a number of States, most of them hostile to one another. These States were ruled by rajahs, who fought bloody wars with one, another,-crushed their own subjects to the earth with taxes, tortured and killed them at will, and lived in unrestrained barbaric luxury. They built palaces and tombs of fabulous magnificence for themselves, and obliged their people to live from hand to mouth in mud huts. When famines and pestilences raged they did nothing to check or relievo them. Worse despots and rascals than were these rajahs and maharajahs have never been known, and so far as their English “political agents” permit they are the same now. Their fortunes were incredible.

A rajah was advised by the agent to lend some of his treasure (which was lying idle in his collars) to the English, and to use the interest upon it for local improvements. Five months were consumed in counting his hoards, and the interest upon it at 3 per cent, amounted to twenty lakhs of rupees. Another rajah whose political agent had helped him collect a supposed bad debt sent him a reward of £485,000 sterling ; when the agent told him that he conld not accept it—there is no describing the state of mind of that rajah. When I was in Jubulpore the American missionary there, Mr Johnson, told me that the local rajah could easily afford to pay from his surplus revenues 10,000,000 rupees annually to the famine fund, but he had actually given but a few hundred. India before tho English came was a gorgeous or ghastly place to live in, according to your rank and power. Underlying all the dynasties and their changes was the Indian village, than which their exists nothing more ancient and primitive. It exists unaltered still. It is the link between the dreary present and the bloodstained intolerable past.

RULED By THE MONEY-LENDER, la the village live the cultivator and the laborer. The latter works for the former; but the former doea nob work for himself ; he is and haa always been hopelessly in debt. His master from birth to death ia the bunniah, the money-lender, who owns him as he has owned his ancestors and will own his posterity. The bunniahs are a caste; it has always been their business to lend at usurious interest, to pile Ossa upon Pelion, and never to relent. They do no other work but that; they are the main institution of the country, and were it possible to extirpate them the probability is that the country would be even worse off than it ia now, since the peasants are unable to take care of themselves, and without the constant push of the money-lender at their back would sit idle and wonder what ailed them.

The origin of the.bunniah’s power is casto ; it is incumbent upon every Hindoo when his son marries to give a feast to his fellowcaste people, costing from 50 to 150 rupee?. The man knows that he can never amass such a sum ; he knows that if he borrows it he can never repay it; and so does the bunniah who lends it to him. Have it ho must, or be out-caste ; which is one degree worse than slavery to vhe bunniah. He borrows it accordingly, harhia feast, and his slavery begins. All that he has is mortgaged to secure interest, and when the interest gets too large to be paid he has nothing. The bunniah allows him just as much grain as will keep him able' to work, and takes all the rest. Does the cultivator chafe under this imposition ? No. It is the custom of the country. He has the use of the hut, the utensils, the tools, the bullocks, which were his, but are now the bunniah’s ; he has his handfuls of grain every day ; he is content. Like other born slaves he is care-free, and would cot know what to do with independence if ho bad it.

When famine came, however, he used to starve as a matter of course; the bunniah would not help him any more than the rajah. The bunniah knew that there were enough other slaves in India without him. When famine comes now, he starves only provisionally; there are open to him the famine relief works and the gratuitous relief. Were these administered solely by Englishmen he might not starve at all, if he would consent to avail himself of them; but, as X have shown in previous articles, he meets the native assistant, and the latter, in nine cases out of ten, cheats him out of the means of keeping body and soul together —between which, by the way, in the case of these Indian riots, there is at the best of times a very fragile connection. BUNNIAH PAYS THE TAXES. Of course, as the bunniah owns the village, he pays the taxes. In the good old times the rajah used to swoop down upon him ever and anon, and either torture him into giving up his money or kill him and take it. With funds thus collected the rajah would enjoy an extravagant debauch, and the money would thus find its way back, through the town tradesmen, to the village again; there was no thought of spending any of it in improvements to alleviate the people’s condition. Besides, a good deal of each haul got into the rajah’s vaults, and there remained indefinitely. But let us now see how the English manage these things. The days of the East India Company nabobs, when Indian goods could be bough c or produced cheap and sold dear, are long gone by, and the possibility of growing rich in India has gone along with them. India now affords a market for a large percentage of England’s manufactures and an arena for the career of her younger sons. The balance of trade is little, if at all, in England’s favor; and all the money derived from taxation in India is spent upon internal improvements and bettering the condition of the natives. The only moneys derived from India, which are not spent in the country, are the enlistment fees for English soldiers drafted to India, and the pensions of superannuated Civil servants; these aggregate a very small amount.

England is wealthy, and India is poor; but_ England’s wealth is nob drawn from India. The reason of India’s poverty is that the soil, under the existing methods of oultl-. vation, cannot more than support the increased population in good years, and in bad years starvation sets in. Her' poverty is also due to the ignorance, superstition, and obstinacy of the Indians, who oppose always a passive, and sometimes an active, resistance to English efforts to enlighten and free them. Nowhere else in the world is education so slow, thankless, and even perilous a task as in India,

The financial administration, rigidly economical, sets aside all available funds to provide against years ot scarcity. When famine threatens, these moneys are used ; taxes are .lightened or remitted; public works are promptly set on foot, which will not only give work and pay to the suffering, but will strengthen the country with more railroads and canals, with irrigation tanks and works, and with whatever other undertakings involve permanent improvement of present conditions. TAXATION IS KEPT LOW. As regards taxation, it is kept at the lowest figure compatible with the working

cf the country ; but if it were lessened, not the farmer, but only the bunniah, would thereby benefit. His exactions from his elaves would ■be the same, and he would pocket the difference. Bat were taxation increased, the farmer, and with him India, would disappear altogether, since the bunniah would not go to his own savings until ho had sucked the last drop of the farmer’s life blood. The outlook for India is dark; The darkness is due partly to the nature of the country, partly to the nature of the people. I fail toiseo that any of it is due to the English. It seems to me to exist in spite of their moat conscientious efforts to dispel it. Whatever other sins the Government of England may have to answer for, she must be acquitted as to India. Let England ponder again the words of Sir Herbert Edwordes. Let her inspire India with a veritable Christian faitb, and nine-tenths of the present difficulties would spontaneously cease. But in order to inspire such faith one must first possess it; and England, conscientious, energetic, just, and proud of her religious history, is not a Christian nation,. and therefore forfeits the measureless power for good which might otherwise be hers.