India As It Is.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 7, 18 August 1909, Page 41

India As It Is.

(fly an Anglo-Indian.)

There is no hope of any elementary understanding in England of the character of our Indian Empire until people realise that there is no country such as India and no such people as the Indians. After all, a moment’s thought would convince any intelligent person —not to say, with Macaulay, any schoolboy—that three hundred millions of human beings, inhabiting 1,760,597 square miles, can hardly be so homogeneous as to deserve to be describe! as the people of India. Native States. As a matter of fact, only two-thirds of this area is under British administration at all, one-third thereof and one-fifth of the population being under the immediate government of native chiefs, all in subordinate alliance, it is true, with the Government of India, and all possessing different degrees of independence. India is a classic instance of State ownership in land, the State over the great part of the continent being the owner, to which the occupier makes payments, as to the need of which theorists differ, but as to the amount of which there is no doubt that whereas under former rulers the whole surplus, after leaving enough for the bare subsistence of the cultivator, was taken by the King, something less than one-ten th of the total is now realised on a rough average all Over the Empire. Probably 7 per cent is about correct. Yet it is roundly asserted by agitators in England that the people are ground down by the British Government; that there was once a golden age, and that this is the age of iron; that the British Government invented famines; and that the British, in point of fact, are the root of all evil. Famines. Yet the few “historical records which do exist conclusively prove the fact that famines in the old days were more frequent than at present, and that when they occurred they swept away, perhaps, half and sometimes more of the population affected. The people were reduced to such straits that human flesh was sold, and the humane and civilised character of the people wholly p-rverted. At the present time, under the Famine Code, as soon as prices rise above certain rates a system of outdoor relief comes into play automatically, an! nobody in India need die of starvation any more than any of the unemployed in England need experience the pangs of hunger while the Poor Law system guarantees sustenance for allIf India is to be compared with anything in Europe, the German Empire, different as it is, alone gives any basis for comparison.

The rulers of the great native States have powers of life and death, and manage their own affairs quite indejiendently, except in so far as they are unable to enter into relations with foreign Powers, are under certain disabilities with regard to the armies they may maintain, and are bound to receive at their Courts a representative of the British Government who occupies a position somewhat analogous to that of an Ambassador or Minister-Resident in Europe. These great Princes have no objection to the intervention of the Viceroy moiv or less, and within certain prescribed limits, but such as r.re in political relations with any one of the thirteen local Governments may be expected not to ap preciate the interference of any native of India to which they may be direcCty or indirectly subjected after and when such natives are appointed members of the Councils of the Governor, or Lieu-tenant-Governor, as the case may be, at the head of local Governments. The Tradition. The Indian Prince—and in this respect he does not differ from the ordinary native of India —whatever be his rank, accepts as a tradition foreign domination to which for centuries parts of India have been subjected. But the proud chieftain and the high-born zemindar regards in a very different light the middle-class man or son of the people, who, by means Of the system of education we have introduced, is now able to rise to positions in which he is able to control men in whose presence his father would not have been permitted to sit down. All these facts are either ignorantly or purposely withheld by the represents lives of the so-called Indian National Congress, which represents only the professional middle-class, that has come to the front during the last thirty yean., and to which the Mahometans, who form one-fifth, and it be said, the fighting fifth, of the inhabitants of India, ar, opposed. No sooner, indeed, was an effort madr to treat all India as in some sense homo geneous in the reforms recently passed through both Houses of Parliament thai the irreconcilable, though more or lew latent, differences between Hindus ani Mahometans, were immediately re realed. It has taxed even tk< statesmanlike resources of Ixiri Morley to reconcile these onpos ing claims, and it is doubtful indeed whether any other living statesman thai himself could have dealt satisfactorilj with the situation.