LAST THOUGHTS ON INDIA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10598, 29 October 1910, Page 6

LAST THOUGHTS ON INDIA.

THE PROBLEM FACING US. (By J. Ramsay Mncdojiald, M.P.) ' The strength of India is her impassivity. Raids and conquests and revolutions have passed over her, and she has hardly altered. The stranger to-day may be deluded by the Western aspect of Calcutta, by tiie smoking chimneys of_ Bombay, and by the busy harbors of both, into a belief that lie is seeing a new India at last arise—an India of the West; but I have a suspicion that when the newIndia comes it will be wonderfully like the old. The factory has come to stay, the agricultural community may pass away, a proletarian class of landless wage-earners will grow up iu the industrial centres —and in spite of it all, In;dia will remain herself.

Li'all hci aqtiwties, she is going back upon her old self. When the Indian vouth Ihrce-quaitcrs of a centuiy ago was alluied b\ Western culture, he prided himself on being a child of the preach Revolution He got drunk to 'shpw that he was emancipated, he danced' before his elders in the streets, and shouted, "I to show that he was a Western./ He quoted llumo, and cuticised his gods. When he retained religions Reliefs, lie cithei became- a Christian an eclectic kind of Hinduism more Westein than Indian"

__Al\ thai is changed We rejected him from om 'Western circles, we cursed him for his impudence", we laughed at him for his silliness; we thiew him hack upon himself. is returning to his own souices of being His religious revivals aie levivals of his old faith He is returning to the Vedas, to the Gita, to his gin us. Indian * history, Indian science Indian art, Indian philosophy, Indian craftsmanship—these he is pursuing in ordei to realise himself

He finds the largest measure of raptuie. in contemplating India as his mothei goddess Hisßandc Mataram is no meie poetic expression to him. It is literally true that India is his mother. The Western mind cannot giasp this But if \ou are fortunate enough to get some Nationalist enthusiast to pour 'out his faith to you, you get a glimmering of light upon this point India is the outwaid sign and embodiment of I his faith. She is the object of the I lavish affection of his gods, she is the culture, the religion, the civilisation of the Indian. No one can understand the meaning and the force of'the Nationalist .movement unless and iin'til he has gained a conception of the land as the deified Mother Land.

The next thing -which the stranger discovers is that Indians" —at' any"' rate, Hindus, and not a few Mohammedans — always think of India as a whole. In spite of,her sixty or,seventy languages and, marry more dialects,.in'spite of her different races and castes, in spite of her great distances, she is always thought of-as a whole, including Ceylon.. In..'her legends, the councils of her gods rided the whole land south of the great mountains, her pilgrims wander to her shrines from all her corners. Thq Hindu i of the north, whose world is hounded by his fields, as a devout man repeats the "prayer, "Hail! O, ye Ganges, Jamna,' Godavari, Sarasvati, Xarniada, Sindhu and Knveri, come and appioach these waters." This sense of unity in the heart of the Hindu is a greater binding force than tlie separatist force of the differences in social status, caste and religion. Thus it is that the Nationalist movement to-day is essentially a religious movement. The Gita —the Hindu Gospel" according to St. John—plays as great a part in the extremist "political movement in India as the Psalms played in the Puritan movement'. Thus we discover that India ,is more self-con-scious to-day thari ever she has been

under our rule. She is "not apologising for' herself; she is glorying in herself. She is, so to speak, arraying herself once more in the feasts, the offerings, the festivals, and the ceremonies which laid aside shamefacedly when the Western movement was upon her, and was telling her credulous ear that she was heathen and barbaric. But this awakened India has been by no ; means uninfluenced by the West. India is full of The .pons asinorum of Indian politics- is to discover the unity consistent with the contradictions. The West has broken India's bonds of social bondage, and has t taught her ' something of Individual equality and freedom, it has put a disturbing and agitating element into her mass. That element is neither purely Eastern nor purely Western. It is, at present, an unhappy blending of both, and is mainly composed of the men wo have been educating in our ways, and whom wo have told that there is now no place in the world for them. The educated minority which is giving so muck trouble to our officials are goaded on by economic poverty, by unfulfilled political desire,- by pride in their own race, and by resentment at their exclusion from Anglo-Indian society. Consequently, "two things appear to me to be as plain iis noonday. The first is that the soul and genius of India is putting itself in opposition to us; the second is that we are trying to run away from the consequences of our own educational-policy and political teaching. As governors of an Oriental country we" have not the "personality" to keep it in spiritual subjection, nor have we the courage to allow it to develop on/ our own political lines. Two qualities in the ruling race will keep India subject—spiritual power and rational consistence. We have neither; therefore our path is ,to be strewn with thorns.

One of the difficulties of the situation is that the Indian himself now lacks the governing capacity. He writes well, lie speaks well, lie argues; well—when he is having it his own way. There are exceptions to this reservation —as everybody knows who remembers Mr Bannerii's courageous and effective attack upon Lord Cromer at the Imperial .Journalists' Conference last vear. But, speaking generally, the fault of the Indian is the fault of every people that has been subject for generations. He cannot stand lip in presence of the conqueror and speak plainly to,his face. And with this, there is another circumstance which is of great political importance. The mass mind of India is perhaps the most credulous of mankind. It moves as the waters move under the moon. It swells with expectation. Every year it hails some Messiah. It does not seem to be a thing chained to the earth, but something floating in the air, swaying obedient to even- breath. And it is subtle withal. Wc'think of it. as moved by gossip, by mysterious intercommuniugs, by a' baffling system of Freemasonry. Tho official policy adapted, to this situation is undoubtedly one aimed at keeping the people. apart, and so the distinctions between Hindu and Mo- ■ hammedan are made the most of. For tho rest, repression is the order of the day. The Indian is an ex.aggerator by nature. He thinks in terms of the absolute ; he speaks and writes in the. same terms.

Our Press Laws and Seditious Meetings Acts can therefore always be defended by inelegant extracts from speeches and newspaper comments, and m-erv time we put the screw on we only Miccced in solidifying the opposition to nir rule. For the time we cjreute -donee, but we remove none of the re"--entment; we only hank it up." Tims it is that whoever goes with a r resh and independent mind to India—a mind which is at the disposal of neither the officials nor the National Congress, is struck first of all with Indian differences differences .between and creed, differences between the Oriental and the Occidental —and proceeds through manv experiences, to discover unitv in Indian-national life arid similarity between Indian problems and our own. ' '.

Hence the -to an Indian peace is a recognition of 'the fact that the great, political prdblems of India come from the West and "from Western culture, which might have been ""withheld, but-not having been withheld ha? produced consequences which must be faced—and that the type of official we npw<. require is" that bred and trained in Parliamentary methods. If we could persuade the Civil Service of India that it is greater to be a Prime Minister of the British kind than an Akhar or a Grand Mogul all would soon be well. India cries aloud for statesmanship, not for force and repressive edicts.