India, Old and New Part 5

representation, _i.e._ the creation of separate const.i.tuencies for various communities, which, however important or however much ent.i.tled to make their voices heard, might be submerged in const.i.tuencies based solely on territorial representation. "Communal representation" had been conceded to so powerful a minority as the Mahomedans under the Indian Councils Act of 1909; and the Report admitted that it could not be withdrawn from them, and that it might have to be conceded to other communities, such as the Sikhs. At the same time it developed at great length all the theoretical arguments against the principle, viz. that it is opposed to history, that it perpetuates cla.s.s division, that it stereotypes existing relations based on traditions and prejudices which we should do everything to discourage.

At the risk even of travelling somewhat beyond the expressed terms of their reference, the Secretary of State and the Viceroy could not but recognise that the effects of great const.i.tutional reforms, of which the statutory application would be necessarily confined to that part of India that is under direct British administration, must nevertheless react upon that other smaller but still very considerable part of India which enjoys more or less complete internal autonomy under its own hereditary rulers. A growing number of questions, and especially economic questions, must arise in future, which will affect the interests of the Native States as directly as those of the rest of India; and their rulers may legitimately claim, as the Report plainly admitted, to have const.i.tutional opportunities of expressing their views and wishes and of conferring with one another and with the Government of India. For such purposes the Report included suggestions which were to take shape in the establishment of the Chamber of Princes.

One other recommendation of the Report deserves special notice, as it shows the authors to have realised how seriously Parliament, though more directly responsible than ever for the exercise of due vigilance over Indian affairs after the transfer to the Crown, had lost touch with them, since, with the disappearance of the East India Company after the Mutiny, it ceased to hold the regular and exhaustive inquiries which the renewal of the Charter had until then periodically required. As their own scheme was designed merely to give Parliament a lead in the first of a progressive series of const.i.tutional reforms, they recommended that a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the working of the new Indian inst.i.tutions and the general progress of the people of India should at stated intervals determine the further stages of advance towards the final goal of self-government. Such a Commission, armed with power to examine witnesses, would not only enlighten British public opinion, but also probe Indian opinion in a much more searching way than can be done by impa.s.sioned and irresponsible arguments and counter-arguments in the press and on platforms. It would, above all, a.s.sist Parliament to master from time to time the many-sided problem whose progressive solution it would have constantly to watch and periodically to determine.

The Report was a doc.u.ment of such magnitude and complexity, and went so boldly to the roots of Indian government and administration, that even amongst the absorbing preoccupations of the war, which was only just emerging for the Allies from the terrible crisis of March-April 1918, its publication at once provoked a considerable stream of criticism. On the whole, British public opinion was favourable, though there was a small but not uninfluential group of British reactionaries who at once took up, and have ever since maintained, the position that the Report meant, not the mending, for which they saw, moreover, very little need, but the ending of British rule in India. Equal divergencies occurred in Indian public opinion. An Extremist gathering in Madras declared roundly that "the scheme is so radically wrong in principle and in detail that in our opinion it is impossible to modify or improve it." In vain had Mrs. Besant been released from her modern _oubliette_ before Mr. Montagu started for India. "The scheme," she wrote in her haste, on the very day of its publication, "is unworthy to be offered by England or to be accepted by India." In vain had Mr. Montagu allowed himself to be garlanded by Mr. Tilak, who was not far behind Mrs. Besant in p.r.o.nouncing the scheme to be "entirely unacceptable." The Calcutta Provincial Conference of the Congress party held a few days later abounded in the same sense, and a special session of the whole Congress convoked in August in Bombay was only in form somewhat less bitterly uncompromising, and only because it began to realise that the secession of the more moderate elements was likely to reduce "the Parliament of India" to a mere rump. Moderate opinion had not committed itself to acceptance of the scheme as precipitately as the Extremists to its rejection, but against rejection pure and simple it set its face at once, and it rallied so steadily and surely to acceptance that few of the Moderates attended the Provincial Congress, where they were promptly howled down, and they determined to hold a Conference of their own in opposition to the special Congress session. At this Conference, as well as in the Committee of non-official members of the Indian Legislative Council, there was a good deal of disjointed criticism of various recommendations in the Report, not infrequently due to misunderstanding of their import, but on the whole it was recognised as representing a great triumph for the cause of political progress on const.i.tutional lines and therefore for the educated opinion of India. The breach between the Extremists and the Moderates was clearly defined by Mr. B.L.

Mitter, a prominent Moderate of Calcutta and a member of the new Moderate organisation, the "National Liberal League":

The Extremists would have nothing to do with the English in the Government or outside; the Moderates consider co-operation with the English necessary for national development, political, industrial, economic, and otherwise. The Extremists would straightway a.s.sume full responsibility of Government; the Moderates think that would lead to chaos, and would proceed by stages. It is the difference between cataclysm and evolution. The Extremists' ideal is destruction of the existing order of things in the hope that something better will take its place, for nothing can be worse than what is; the Moderates' ideal is formation of a new order of things on definite progressive lines. One is chance, the other is design.

The primary difference (so far as methods are concerned) is that the Extremists' method is not necessarily const.i.tutional; the Moderates' method always const.i.tutional. Some Extremists use violence, others work secretly and spread discontent and disaffection. Others again, pretending to follow legitimate methods of agitation, take care not to discourage unconst.i.tutional methods or even crimes, nay, they miss no opportunity to applaud criminals as martyrs. There are others, again, who merely idealise and are content with rousing the pa.s.sions of the people. Intrigue and abuse are the general weapons in the Extremists' armoury. The Moderates always act openly and with dignity, and follow lawful methods of agitation. The Extremists always oppose the Government. The Moderates co-operate with authority, and oppose when necessary in the interests of the country. Lastly, the Extremists appeal only to the pa.s.sions of the people; the Moderates appeal to their reason.

Later developments in India itself were unfortunately to play once more into the hands of the Extremists, and the leaders.h.i.+p was to pa.s.s from Mr. Tilak, who was growing old and died in the summer of 1920, and from Mrs. Besant too, who, after being bitterly reviled by her former ally, at last saw the error of her ways and finally went over to the Moderate camp with the diminis.h.i.+ng remnants of her influence, into the hands of a new and strange figure in Indian politics, Mr. Gandhi, endowed with very different qualities and greater spiritual influence than either of them.

But before bringing him on to the stage it may be well to follow the progress of Indian reforms at home after the publication of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. It had been laid before Parliament without any _imprimatur_ from the Cabinet, and some months pa.s.sed before, with the conclusion of the war, His Majesty's Government found leisure to give it their collective consideration. Not till June 1919 was Mr.

Montagu in a position to move in the House of Commons the second reading of the great Bill drafted with their authority to give effect in all essentials to the recommendations of the Report. His powerful and lucid exposition of its provisions and of the whole situation with which England was confronted in India made a deep impression on the House, though it by no means disarmed opposition, and the Bill was remitted for consideration to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses which, chosen impartially from all parties, proceeded to take a large ma.s.s of evidence from British and Indian witnesses of every political complexion, and delivered a very weighty report in November. The views of the Government of India and of the Provincial Governments, by no means always in accord amongst themselves, had also been before the Committee, as well as those of the members of the Secretary of State's Council. But the alternative proposals submitted were either impracticable or ineffective, and the Bill which, in so far as it was modified in accordance with its recommendations, a.s.sumed an even more liberal character. Mr. Montagu's hands were thus strengthened for the final debates in the House of Commons in which the opposition proved sterile in argument and weak in numbers, and the Bill was pa.s.sed through both Houses of Parliament in time for the const.i.tutional a.s.sent of the Crown to be given to it and for the King-Emperor to address a solemn proclamation to the Viceroy, Princes, and people of India on the eminently appropriate date of Christmas Eve 1920. This Royal message of peace and goodwill set forth in simple language both the purposes and the genesis of the Act:

I have watched with understanding and sympathy the growing desire of my Indian people for representative inst.i.tutions. Starting from small beginnings, this ambition has steadily strengthened its hold upon the intelligence of the country. It has pursued its course along const.i.tutional channels with sincerity and courage. It has survived the discredit which at times and in places lawless men sought to cast upon it by acts of violence committed under the guise of patriotism. It has been stirred to more vigorous life by the ideals for which the British Commonwealth fought in the Great War, and it claims support in the part which India has taken in our common struggles, anxieties, and victories.

In truth, the desire after political responsibility has its source at the root of the British connection with India. It has sprung inevitably from the deeper and wider studies of human thought and history which that connection has opened to the Indian people.

Without it the work of the British in India would have been incomplete. It was, therefore, with a wise judgment that the beginnings of representative inst.i.tutions were laid many years ago.

Their scope has been extended stage by stage until there now lies before us a definite step on the road to responsible government.

The Act, which implemented all the princ.i.p.al recommendations of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, superseded within little more than fifty years the Government of India Act of 1858, under which the Crown first a.s.sumed direct responsibility for the government and administration of India. The Royal message certainly did not exaggerate its significance.

Its actual provisions are indeed of less moment than its larger implications and the spirit in which it will be interpreted and carried into effect. For the right spirit to crown the new Const.i.tution with success we must look to Indians and British alike, not forgetting that the changes introduced into the structure of Indian government and administration are themselves only ancillary to the still more important changes which must result from the recognition of Indian public opinion as a powerful and ultimately paramount influence in the shaping of policy. Such recognition must follow not only from the creation of Indian representative a.s.semblies with a large majority of Indian elected members but from the appointment of Indians, three in number already in the Government of India, three in the Secretary of State's Council in Whitehall, and in varying numbers both as Ministers and members of the Executive Councils in Provincial Governments. Side by side with this progressive Indianisation of the Executive of which we are witnessing only the first stage, the Indianisation of the administrative departments and of the public services, and not least of the Indian Civil Service, is bound to proceed with increasing rapidity. Indians can hardly fail to realise that, perhaps for a long time to come, they will require the experience and driving power of Englishmen, but they will inevitably claim increasing control over policy, now formally conceded to them in a large Provincial sphere, until it shall have extended in successive stages to the whole sphere of Provincial Government and ultimately to the Central Government itself. Then, and then only, India will actually emerge into complete Dominion Self-Government. But we shall do well to remember, and Indians will certainly not allow us to forget, that the terms of equality, on which her representatives are now admitted to the innermost counsels of the Empire, have already in many respects outstripped the Act of 1919.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _The Evolution of Mrs. Besant_, by the Editor of _Justice_, Madras, _Justice_ Printing Works, 1918.

CHAPTER IX

THE EMERGENCE OF MR. GANDHI

Before this great statute could be brought into operation, and even whilst Parliament was still laboriously evolving it, a strange and incalculable figure was coming to the forefront in India, who, favoured by an extraordinary combination of untoward circ.u.mstances, was to rally round him some of the most and many of the least reputable forces which, sometimes under new disguises, the old and pa.s.sive civilisation of India is instinctively driven to oppose to the disintegrating impact upon it of the active and disturbing energies of Western civilisation. Saint and prophet in the eyes of the mult.i.tude of his followers--saint in the eyes even of many who have not accepted him as a prophet--Mr. Gandhi preaches to-day under the uninspiring name of "Non-co-operation," a gospel of revolt none the less formidable because it is so far mainly a gospel of negation and retrogression, of destruction not construction. Mr. Gandhi challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British rule. He has pa.s.sed judgment upon both British rule and Western civilisation, and, condemning both as "Satanic," his cry is away with the one and with the other, and "back to the Vedas," the fountain source of ancient Hinduism. That he is a power in the land none can deny, least of all since the new Viceroy, Lord Reading, almost immediately on his arrival in India, spent long hours in close conference with him at Simla. What manner of man is Mr. Gandhi, whom Indians revere as a Mahatma, _i.e._ an inspired sage upon whom the wisdom of the ancient Ris.h.i.+s has descended? What is the secret of his power?

Born in 1869 in a Gujarat district in the north of the Bombay Presidency, Mohandas Karamchamd Gandhi comes of very respectable Hindu parentage, but does not belong to one of the higher castes. His father, like others of his forebears, was Dewan, or chief administrator, of one of the small native States of Kathiawar. He himself was brought up for the Bar and, after receiving the usual English education in India, completed his studies in England, first as an undergraduate of the London University and then at the Inner Temple. His friend and biographer, Mr. H.S.L. Polak, tells us that his mother, whose religious example and influence made a lasting impression upon his character, held the most orthodox Hindu views, and only agreed to his crossing "the Black Water" to England after exacting from him a three-fold vow, which he faithfully kept, of abstinence from flesh, alcohol, and women. He returned to India as soon as he had been called to the Bar and began to practise as an advocate before the Bombay High Court, but in 1893, as fate would have it, he was to be called to South Africa in connection with an Indian legal case in Natal. In South Africa he was brought at once into contact with a bitter conflict of rights between the European population and the Indian settlers who had originally been induced to go out and work there at the instance of the white communities who were in need of cheap labour for the development of the country. The Europeans, professing to fear the effects of a large admixture of Asiatic elements, had begun not only to restrict further Indian immigration, but to place the Indians already in South Africa under many disabilities all the more oppressive because imposed on racial grounds. Natal treated them harshly, but scarcely as harshly as the Transvaal, then still under Boer government. In the Transvaal the Imperial Government took up the cudgels for them, and the treatment of the Indian settlers there was one of the grievances pressed by Lord Milner during the negotiations which preceded the final rupture with the Boer Republics. When the South African war broke out Mr. Gandhi believed that it would lead to a generous recognition of the rights of Indians if they at once identified their cause with that of the British, and he induced Government to accept his offer of an Indian Ambulance Corps which did excellent service in the field. Mr. Gandhi himself served with it, was mentioned in despatches, and received the war medal. His health gave way, and he returned to India in 1901 where he resumed practice in Bombay with no intention of returning to South Africa, as he felt confident that when the war was over the Imperial Government would see to it that the Indians should have the benefit of the principles which it had itself proclaimed before going into the war. He was, however, induced to return in 1903 to help in preparing the Indian memorials to be laid before Mr. Chamberlain whose visit was imminent in connection with the work of reconstruction.

On his arrival he found that conditions and European opinion were becoming more instead of less unfavourable for Indians, and though in 1906, when the native rebellion broke out in Natal, he again offered and secured the acceptance of an Indian Stretcher-Bearer Corps with which he again served and received the thanks of the Governor, he gradually found himself driven into an att.i.tude of more and more open opposition and even conflict with Government by a series of measures imposing more and more intolerable restraints upon his countrymen. It was in 1906 that he first took a vow of pa.s.sive resistance to a law which he regarded as a deliberate attack upon their religion, their national honour, and their racial self-respect. In the following year he was consigned, not for the first time, to jail in Pretoria, but his indomitable att.i.tude helped to bring about a compromise. It was, however, short-lived, as misunderstandings occurred as to its interpretation. The struggle broke out afresh until another provisional settlement promised to lead to a permanent solution, when Mr. Gokhale, after consultation with the India Office during a visit to England, was induced in 1912 to proceed to South Africa and use his good offices in a cause which he had long had at heart. Whether, as Mr. Gokhale himself always contended, as a deliberate breach of the promise made to him by the princ.i.p.al Union Ministers, or as the result of a lamentable misunderstanding, measures were again taken in 1913 which led Mr. Gandhi to renew the struggle, and it a.s.sumed at once a far more serious character than ever before. It was then that Mr. Gandhi organised his big strikes of Indian labour and headed the great strikers' march of protest into the Transvaal which led to the arrest and imprisonment of the princ.i.p.al leaders and of hundreds of the rank and file. The furious indignation aroused in India, the public meetings held in all the large centres, and the protest entered by the Viceroy himself, Lord Hardinge, in his speech at Madras, combined with earnest representations from Whitehall, compelled General s.m.u.ts to enter once more the path of conciliation and compromise. As the result of a Commission of Inquiry the Indians' Relief Act was pa.s.sed, and in the correspondence between Mr. Gandhi and General s.m.u.ts the latter undertook on behalf of the South African Government to carry through other administrative reforms not actually specified in the new Act. Mr.

Gandhi returned to India just after the outbreak of the Great War, and the Government of India marked its appreciation of the great services which he had rendered to his countrymen in South Africa by recommending him for the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal, which was conferred upon him amongst the New Year honours of 1915.

The South African stage of Mr. Gandhi's career is of great importance, as it goes far to explain both the views and the methods which he afterwards applied in India. He brought back with him from South Africa a profound distrust of Western civilisation, of which he had unquestionably witnessed there some of the worst aspects, and also a strong belief in the efficacy of pa.s.sive resistance as the most peaceful means of securing the redress of all Indian grievances in India as well as in South Africa should they ever become in his opinion unendurable.

Mr. Gokhale, before he died, obtained a promise from him that for at least a year he would not attempt to give practical expression to the extreme views which he had already set forth in the proscribed pamphlet _Hind Swaraj_. At an early age Mr. Gandhi had fallen under the spell of Tolstoian philosophy, and he has admitted only quite recently that for a time he was so much impressed with the doctrines of Christ that he was inclined to adopt Christianity; but the further study of the spiritual side of Hinduism convinced him that in it alone the key of salvation could be found, and all his teachings since then have been based on his faith in the superiority of the Indian civilisation rooted in Hinduism to Western civilisation, which for him in fact represents in its present stage only a triumph of gross materialism and brute force. Nevertheless, when the Great War broke out, he was prepared to believe that the ordeal of war in the cause of freedom for which Britain had taken up arms might lead to the redemption of Western civilisation from its worst evils, and whilst in London on his way to South Africa he had already offered to form, and to enrol himself and his wife in, an Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Yet he was not blind to the flaws of the civilisation for which he stood. He conducted a temperance campaign amongst his countrymen in South Africa, and, brought there into close contact with many Indians of the "untouchable" castes, he revolted against a system which tried to erect such insurmountable barriers between man and man.

Perhaps the best clue to the many contradictions in which his activities have continually seemed to involve him was furnished by himself when he said, "Most religious men I have met are politicians in disguise; I, however, who wear the guise of a politician am at heart a religious man," and the doctrine which he holds of all others to be the corner-stone of his religion is that of _Ahimsa_, which, as he has described it, "requires deliberate self-suffering, not the deliberate injuring of the wrongdoer," in the resistance of evil.

Throughout the war Mr. Gandhi devoted his ceaseless energies chiefly to preaching social reforms and the moral regeneration of his countrymen.

He was then an honoured guest at European gatherings, as for instance at the Madras Law dinner in 1915, at various conferences on education, at the Bombay Provincial Co-operative Conference in 1917 when in connection with the admirable Co-operative Credit movement in India he lectured on the moral basis of co-operation, at missionary meetings in which he showed his intimate familiarity with the gospels by reverently quoting Christ's words in support of his own plea for mutual forbearance and tolerance. As late as July 1918 he defined _Swaraj_ as partners.h.i.+p in the Empire, and war service as the easiest and straightest way to win _Swaraj_, inviting the people of his own Gujarat country whom he was addressing to wipe it free of the reproach of effeminacy by contributing thousands of Sepoys in response to the Viceroy's recent appeal for fresh recruits for the Indian army at one of the most critical moments during the war. His comments about the same time on the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme were by no means unfavourable, and he specifically joined in the tribute of praise bestowed upon the Indian Civil Service for their steadfast devotion to duty and great organising ability. Government itself resorted to his services as the member of a Commission appointed to inquire into agrarian troubles at Camparan, and his collaboration was warmly welcomed by his European colleagues. Nor were there any signs of implacable hostility to British rule in his vigorous protests in the following year against the anti-Asiatic legislation of the South African Union which was again stirring up bad feeling in India.

The circ.u.mstances which drove him to declare war against British rule and Western civilisation arose out of the action taken by Government on the report of the "Sedition Committee," which, under the presidency of Mr. Justice Rowlatt, a judge of the High Court of King's Bench, sent out especially to preside over it, had not only carefully explored the origins and growth of political crime during the great wave of unrest after the Part.i.tion of Bengal, but recommended that in some directions the hands of the executive and judicial authorities should be strengthened to cope with any fresh outbreaks of a similar character.

The Committee pointed out that in spite of the preventive legislation of 1911 it had become apparent before the war broke out that the forces of law and order were still inadequately equipped to cope with the situation in Bengal. For the duration of the war the Defence of India Act had conferred upon Government emergency powers which had enabled the authorities summarily to intern a large number of those who were known to be closely connected with the criminal propaganda, but almost as soon as the war was over their release would follow automatically upon the expiry of the Defence Act, and a dangerous situation would arise again if Government had nothing but the old methods of procedure to fall back upon.

In January 1919 the Government of India announced that legislation in conformity with the recommendations of the Sedition Committee would be required from the Imperial Legislative Council, and two draft bills were published, one of them embodying permanent alterations in the law and the other arming the Executive with emergency powers. The publication of these bills threw the country into a fresh ferment of agitation, and even an Indian judge of undeniably moderate views, Sir Narain Chandavarkar, declared that such measures were no longer required, as with the advent of const.i.tutional reforms revolutionary agitation would, he believed, cease, and, as a warm supporter of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, he felt bound to protest against legislation so entirely at variance with the spirit in which the Report had been conceived and with the expectations which it had aroused. The Extremists read into the bills another proof of the organised hypocrisy characteristic of British rule in general and of the Report in particular, and denounced them as a monstrous engine of tyranny and oppression, against which no Indian would be safe. Government, however, was not to be moved from its determination, and in explaining the necessity for proceeding with the bills the Viceroy pointed out in his opening speech that "the reaction against all authority that had manifested itself in many parts of the civilised world was unlikely to leave India entirely untouched and the powers of evil were still abroad." The Indian non-official members, on the other hand, were solid in opposition, and even those who did not challenge the report of the Sedition Committee intimated that now the war was over they could not acquiesce in such measures until the reforms had come into operation, and unless it was then found that revolutionary forces were still at work and const.i.tuted a real public danger. The two amendments, supported by all the Indian non-official members, were voted down by the official _bloc_. Government did something to allay opposition by agreeing that the Act which was to have been permanent should operate for three years only, and the t.i.tle of the bill was amended to show clearly that its application would be confined to clearly anarchical and revolutionary crimes. It was further modified in form in the committee stage, but the opposition within the Council remained unmoved, and outside the Council grew more and more fierce. The Extremists who had shrunk from no efforts to misrepresent the purpose of the bills received a great accession of strength when Mr. Gandhi inst.i.tuted the vow of _Satyagraha_, or pa.s.sive resistance, under which, if the bills became law, he and his followers would "severally refuse to obey these laws and such other laws as a committee to be thereafter appointed might see fit," whilst they would "faithfully follow the truth and refrain from violence to life, person, or property." The Moderate leaders at Delhi at once issued a manifesto condemning _Satyagraha_, but Government stuck to its guns, the bills being finally pa.s.sed on March 18, after very hot discussion. Mr. Gandhi, having formed his committee, proclaimed a _Hartal_, _i.e._ a demonstrative closing of shops and suspension of business for March 30.

This _Hartal_ at Delhi started a terrible outbreak which spread with unexpected violence over parts of the Bombay Presidency and the greater part of the Punjab, with sporadic disturbances in the North-West Frontier Province, and even in Calcutta.

The Delhi _Hartal_ brought for the first time into full relief the close alliance into which the Mahomedan Extremists had been brought with the Hindu Extremists, as well as the influence which both had acquired over a considerable section of the lower cla.s.ses in the two communities. The political leaders had fallen into line in the Indian National Congress and the All-India Moslem League during the 1916 and 1917 sessions, when they united in demanding Home Rule for India, and they had united since then in rejecting as totally inadequate the scheme of reforms foreshadowed in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. But not till towards the conclusion of the war did the Mahomedan Extremists discover a special grievance for their own community in the peace terms likely to be imposed upon a beaten Turkey. That was a grievance far more likely to appeal to their co-religionists than the political grievances which had formed the stock-in-trade of Hindu Extremism, if they could be worked upon to believe that Great Britain and her allies were plotting not merely against the temporal power of the Ottoman Empire, but against the Mahomedan religion all over the world by depriving the Sultan of Turkey of the authority essential to the discharge of his office as Khalif or spiritual head of Islam.

The agitation was at first very artificial, for the bulk of Indian Mahomedans had until recent years known very little about and taken still less interest in Turkey, and their loyalty had never wavered during the war. Some of the leading Indian Mahomedans had indeed openly disputed Sultan Abdul Hamid's claim to the Khalifate of Islam when he first tried at the end of the last century to import his Pan-Islamic propaganda into India. But the long delay on the part of the Allies in formulating their Turkish peace terms allowed time for the movement to grow and to carry with it the more fanatical element amongst Indian Mahomedans. The Government of India tried in vain to allay Mahomedan feeling by receiving deputations from the _Khilafat_ a.s.sociation founded to prosecute an intensified campaign in favour of Turkey, and professing its own deep anxiety to procure what it called "a just peace with Turkey," for which the Indian delegates to the War and to the Peace Conferences in Europe had been constantly instructed to plead. The greatest success which the _Khilafat_ agitators achieved was when Mr.

Gandhi allowed himself to be persuaded by them that the movement was a splendid manifestation of religious faith, as he himself described it to me. For, once satisfied that the cause which they had taken up was a religious cause, he was prepared to make it his own without inquiring too closely into its historical or political justification. For him it became a revolt of the Mahomedan religious conscience against the tyranny of the West just as legitimate as the revolt of the Hindu conscience against the same tyranny embodied in the Rowlatt Acts. Whilst Mahomedans proved their emanc.i.p.ation from narrow sectarianism by joining in the _Satyagraha_ movement of pa.s.sive resistance in spite of the Hindu character impressed upon it by its Sanscrit name, it was, he declared, for Hindus to show that they, too, could rise above ancient prejudice and resentment by throwing themselves heart and soul into the _Khilafat_ movement. Both movements were to be demonstrations of the "soul-force"

of India, to be put forth in pa.s.sive resistance according to his favourite doctrine of _Ahimsa_, the endurance and not the infliction of suffering.

But Mr. Gandhi, with all his visionary idealism, was letting loose dangerous forces which recked naught of _Ahimsa_. Hindus and Mahomedans "fraternised" at the Delhi _Hartal_ in attempts to compel its observance by violence which obliged the authorities to use forcible methods of repression, and of the five rioters who were killed two were Mahomedans.

These deaths were skilfully exploited by the Extremists of both denominations, and a day of general mourning for the Delhi "martyrs" was appointed. The spark had been laid to the train, and Hindus and Mahomedans continued to "fraternise" in lawlessness, arson, and murder wherever the mob ran riot. Systematic attempts to destroy railways and telegraphs at the same moment in widely separated areas pointed to the existence of a carefully elaborated organisation. Public buildings as well as European houses were burnt down in half a dozen places, and Europeans were often savagely attacked and done to death, nowhere more savagely than at Amritsar, where five Europeans, two of them Bank managers, were killed with the most fiendish brutality, and a missionary lady, known for her good works, barely escaped with her life. The authorities were not slow to take stern measures. Troops were rapidly moved to the centres of disturbance, flying columns were sent through the country, and armoured cars and trains and aeroplanes were used to disperse the rioters. A Resolution issued by the Government of India on April 14 a.s.serted its determination to use all the powers vested in it to put down "open rebellion" even by the most drastic means. By the end of the month the Viceroy was able to announce that order had been generally restored, though in some places there was still considerable effervescence.

Had the measures taken, however stern, been confined to the repression of actual violence and to the punishment of the guilty, the reaction produced amongst the great majority of Indians by the atrocities which Indian mobs had committed, and the appalling spirit of lawlessness which inspired them, would probably have been at least as great as the impression which they at first made upon Mr. Gandhi himself, who suddenly recognised and admitted that he had underrated the "forces of evil" and advised his disciples to co-operate, as he himself had done at Ahmedabad, with Government in the restoration of order. The _Satyagraha_ Committee, of which he was President, resolved to suspend temporarily "civil disobedience" to the laws, and the fraternisation between Mahomedans and Hindus cooled down, when important Mahomedan a.s.sociations began to protest against the desecration of mosques by the admission of Hindu "idolaters" to deliver fiery orations to mixed congregations within the sacred precincts. But before the reaction could take real effect, it was arrested by rumours of terrible happenings in the course of the repression in the Punjab which turned the tide of Indian feeling into an opposite direction, and for those rumours there ultimately proved to have been no slight foundation.

The methods adopted in the Punjab had been very different from those adopted in the Bombay Presidency, where there had been scarcely less menacing outbursts in some of the northern districts, besides serious rioting in Bombay itself. In Ahmedabad, the second city of the Presidency, mob law reigned for two days. There were arson and pillage, and murder of Europeans and Government officers. Troops had to be hurried up to quell the disturbances, and for a short time the military authorities had to take charge. The repression was stern; 28 of the rioters were killed and 123 wounded in Ahmedabad alone. There were many arrests and prosecutions. But those stormy days left no bitterness behind them. The use of military force was not resented, because it was directed only against the crowds actually engaged in violent rioting.

Martial law was never proclaimed, nor did the military authorities prolong the exercise of their punitive powers beyond the short period of active disorder, nor strain it beyond the measures essential to the suppression of disorder. They never interfered in administrative matters. The Bombay Government kept their heads, and there was nowhere any wholesale surrender of the civil authority into military hands. Mr.

Gandhi, who had been turned back by the Punjab Government when he tried to enter the Punjab, was left free by the Bombay Government, and the value of his a.s.sistance in restoring order in Allahabad, whilst he was in his first fit of penitence, was acknowledged by the authorities.

Very different was the intensive enforcement of martial law in the Punjab. Even when all allowance is made for the more dangerous situation created by a more martial population and the proximity of an always turbulent North-Western Frontier with the added menace at that time of an Afghan invasion, nothing can justify what was done at Amritsar where the deliberate bloodshed at Jallianwala has marked out April 13, 1919, as a black day in the annals of British India. One cannot possibly realise the frightfulness of it until one has actually looked down on the Jallianwala Bagh--once a garden, but in modern times a waste s.p.a.ce frequently used for fairs and public meetings, about the size perhaps of Trafalgar Square, and closed in almost entirely by walls above which rise the backs of native houses facing into the congested streets of the city. I entered by the same narrow lane by which General Dyer--having heard that a large crowd had a.s.sembled there, many doubtless in defiance, but many also in ignorance of his proclamation forbidding all public gatherings--entered with about fifty rifles. I stood on the same rising ground on which he stood when, without a word of warning, he opened fire at about 100 yards' range upon a dense crowd, collected mainly in the lower and more distant part of the enclosure around a platform from which speeches were being delivered. The crowd was estimated by him at 6000, by others at 10,000 and more, but practically unarmed, and all quite defenceless. The panic-stricken mult.i.tude broke at once, but for ten consecutive minutes he kept up a merciless fusillade--in all 1650 rounds--on that seething ma.s.s of humanity, caught like rats in a trap, vainly rus.h.i.+ng for the few narrow exits or lying flat on the ground to escape the rain of bullets, which he personally directed to the points where the crowd was thickest. The "targets," to use his own word, were good, and when at the end of those ten minutes, having almost exhausted his ammunition, he marched his men off by the way they came, he had killed, according to the official figures only wrung out of Government months later, 379, and he left about 1200 wounded on the ground, for whom, again to use his own word, he did not consider it his "job" to take the slightest thought.

In going to Jallianwala I had pa.s.sed through the streets where, on April 10, when the disorders suddenly broke out in Amritsar, the worst excesses were committed by the Indian rioters. But for General Dyer's own statements before the Hunter Commission, one might have pleaded that, left to his own unbalanced judgment by the precipitate abdication of the civil authority, he simply "saw red," though the outbreak of the 10th had been quelled before he arrived in Amritsar, and the city had been free from actual violence for the best part of three days. But, on his own showing, he deliberately made up his mind whilst marching his men to Jallianwala, and would not have flinched from still greater slaughter if the narrowness of the approaches had not compelled him regretfully to leave his machine-guns behind. His purpose, he declared, was to "strike terror into the whole of the Punjab." He may have achieved it for the time, though the evidence on this point is conflicting, but what he achieved far more permanently and effectively was to create in the Jallianwala Bagh, purchased since then as a "Martyrs' Memorial" by the Indian National Congress, a place of perpetual pilgrimage for racial hatred.

Then, two days after--not before--Jallianwala came the formal proclamation of martial law in the Punjab, and though there were no more Jallianwalas, what but racial hatred could result from a constant stream of petty and vindictive measures enforced even after the danger of rebellion, however real it may at first have seemed, had pa.s.sed away?

Sir Michael O'Dwyer protested, it is true, against General Dyer's monstrous "crawling order," and it was promptly disallowed. But what of many other "orders" which were not disallowed? What of the promiscuous floggings and whippings, the indiscriminate arrests and confiscations, the so-called "fancy punishments" designed not so much to punish individual "rebels" as to terrorise and humiliate? What of the whole judicial or _quasi_-judicial administration of martial law? The essential facts are on record now in the Report of the Hunter Committee and in the evidence taken before it, though its findings were not entirely unanimous and the majority report of the European members, five in number including the president Lord Hunter, formerly Solicitor-General for Scotland, was accompanied by a minority report signed by the three Indian members, two of them now Ministers in the Government of Bombay and of the United Provinces respectively, who on several points attached graver importance to the circ.u.mstances which they themselves had chiefly helped to elicit from witnesses under examination. Upon the Report the Government of India and His Majesty's Government expressed in turn their views in despatches which are also public property. The responsibility of the Government of India was so deeply involved, and in a lesser degree that of the Secretary of State, that in neither case was judgment likely to err on the side of severity.

The Government of India certainly did not so err, and one must turn to the despatch embodying the views of the British Government for a considered judgment which at least set forth in weighty terms the principles of British policy that had been violated in the Punjab, however short some may consider it to have fallen of the full requirements of justice in appraising the gravity of the departure from those principles in specific cases.

The Punjab tragedy has had such far-reaching effects in shaking the confidence of the Indian people in the justice and even in the humanity of British rule that it is best to quote the language in which the British Government recorded their judgment in their despatch to the Government of India:

The principle which has consistently governed the policy of His Majesty's Government in directing the methods to be employed, when military action in support of civil authority is required, may be broadly stated as using the minimum force necessary. His Majesty's Government are determined that this principle shall remain the primary factor of policy whenever circ.u.mstances unfortunately necessitate the suppression of civil disorder by military force within the British Empire.

It must regretfully but without possibility of doubt be concluded that Brigadier-General Dyer's action at Jallianwala Bagh was in complete violation of this principle.

The despatch proceeded to take into account the provocation offered and the great difficulties of the position in which General Dyer was placed.

His omission to give warning before opening fire was nevertheless declared to have been "inexcusable," his failure to see that some attempt was made to give medical a.s.sistance to the dying and the wounded an "omission from his obvious duty," and the "crawling order" issued by him six days later "an offence against every canon of civilised government."

Upon a military commander administering martial law in a hostile country there lies a grave responsibility; when he is compelled to exercise this responsibility over a population which owes allegiance and looks for protection to the Government which he himself is serving, this burden is immeasurably enhanced. It would prejudice the public safety, with the preservation of which he is charged, to fetter his free judgment or action either by the prescription of rigid rules before the event or by over-censorious criticism when the crisis is past. A situation which is essentially military must be dealt with in the light of military considerations which postulate breadth of view and due appreciation of all the possible contingencies. There are certain standards of conduct which no civilised Government can with impunity neglect and which His Majesty's Government are determined to uphold.... That Brigadier-General Dyer displayed honesty of purpose and unflinching adherence to his conception of his duty cannot for a moment be questioned. But his conception of his duty in the circ.u.mstances in which he was placed was so fundamentally at variance with that which His Majesty's Government have a right to expect from and a duty to enforce upon officers who hold His Majesty's commission that it is impossible to regard him as fitted to remain entrusted with the responsibilities which his rank and position impose upon him. You have reported to me that the Commander-in-Chief has directed Brigadier-General Dyer to resign his appointment as Brigade Commander, and has informed him that he would receive no further employment in India and that you have concurred. I approve the decision and the circ.u.mstances of the case have been referred to the Army Council.

With regard to the administration of martial law the despatch considers it

impossible to avoid the conclusion that the majority of Lord Hunter's Committee have failed to express themselves in terms which, unfortunately, the facts not only justify, but necessitate.

In paragraphs 16 to 25 of chapter xii. of their report the majority have dealt with the "intensive" form generally which martial law a.s.sumed and with certain specific instances of undue severity and of improper punishments or orders. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the instances which the Committee have enumerated in detail in both their reports, nor would any useful purpose be served by attempting to a.s.sess, with a view to penalties, the culpability of individual officers who were responsible for these orders, but whose conduct in other respects may have been free from blame or actually commendable. But His Majesty's Government must express strong disapproval of these orders and punishments and ask me to leave to you the duty of seeing that this disapproval shall be unmistakably marked by censure or other action which seems to you necessary upon those who were responsible for them. The instances cited by the Committee gave justifiable ground for the a.s.sertion that the administration of martial law in the Punjab was marred by a spirit which prompted--not generally, but unfortunately not uncommonly--the enforcement of punishments and orders calculated, if not intended to humiliate Indians as a race, to cause unwarranted inconvenience amounting on occasions to injustice, and to flout the standards of propriety and humanity, which the inhabitants not only of India in particular but of the civilised world in general have a right to demand of those set in authority over them. It is a matter for regret that, notwithstanding the conduct of the majority, there should have been some officers in the Punjab who appear to have overlooked the fact that they were administering martial law, not in order to subdue the population of a hostile country temporarily occupied as an act of war, but in order to deal promptly with those who had disturbed the peace of a population owing allegiance to the King Emperor, and in the main profoundly loyal to that allegiance.

This clear enunciation of bed-rock principles and emphatic condemnation of many of the methods of repression used in the Punjab would have done more to rea.s.sure the public mind in India had the actual punishment inflicted on General Dyer and a few others been more commensurate with the gravity of the censure pa.s.sed on their actions, and in any case it came far too late. It came too late to stem the rising tide of Indian bitterness, intensified by many gross exaggerations and deliberate inventions, which lost all sense of proportion when the Extremists demanded Sir Michael O'Dwyer's impeachment, though many responsible Indians had expressed their unabated confidence in him before he left the Punjab on the expiry of his term of office, just after the troubles, in terms more unstinted even than those in which the Government of India and the British Government conveyed their appreciation of his long and distinguished services--services which a.s.suredly no errors of judgment committed under great stress could be allowed to overshadow. It came too late also to correct the effects of the panic that had taken possession of the European mind when it was still largely in ignorance of the actual facts. For most Europeans had at once rushed to the conclusion that the outbreak in the Punjab, in which no single Sepoy ever took part, was or threatened to be a reproduction of the Mutiny. In the first days, as a measure of precaution, European women and children had been hurriedly collected into places of refuge lest the horrible excesses perpetrated by the Indian mob at Amritsar might prove the prelude to a repet.i.tion of Cawnpore. The hards.h.i.+ps and anxiety they underwent and the murderous outrages actually committed on not a few Europeans moved most of their fellow countrymen and countrywomen to unmeasured resentment, and not until they gained at last a fuller knowledge of all the facts so long allowed to remain obscure did a gradual reaction set in against the belief which was genuinely entertained by most Europeans, non-official and official in India, and which spread from them to England, that General Dyer's action and the rigours of martial law alone "saved India."

What drove the iron into the soul of India more than the things actually done in the Punjab, for which many Indians admit the provocation, was the reluctance of her rulers to look them in the face, and the tardiness and half-heartedness of the atonement made for them. Not till nearly half a year after the troubles had occurred did the Government of India announce the appointment of the Hunter Committee of Inquiry, and this announcement was coupled with the introduction of a Bill of Indemnity for all officers of Government engaged in their repression, which wore, in the eyes of Indians, however unreasonably, the appearance of an attempt to shelter them against the possible findings of the Committee.

Again nearly half a year pa.s.sed before the report of the Committee was made public, and the bloom had already been taken off it for most Indians by the report of a Commission inst.i.tuted on its own account by the Indian National Congress which, partisan and lurid as it was, never received full refutation, as the witnesses upon whose evidence it was based were, for technical reasons, not heard by the Hunter Committee.