Various - Essays in Liberalism
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Various >> Essays in Liberalism
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INTERNAL UNREST
Let me now turn to our second question: internal political unrest. In
clubs and other places where wise men in arm-chairs lay down the law
about affairs of state, one constantly hears expressions of surprise and
indignation that there should be any unrest in India at all. "We have,"
say the die-hard wiseacres, "governed India jolly well and jolly
honestly, and the Indians ought to be jolly grateful instead of kicking
up all this fuss. If that meddlesome Montagu had not put these wicked
democratic ideas into their heads, and stirred up all this mud, we
should have gone on quite comfortable as before." But if we face the
facts squarely, we shall see that the wonder is not that there has been
so much, but that there has been so comparatively little unrest, and
that India should, on the whole, have waited so patiently for a definite
advance towards self-government.
What are the facts? They are these. Partly by commercial enterprise,
partly by adroit diplomacy, partly by accident, largely by the valour of
our arms, we have obtained dominion over the great continent of India.
We have ruled it for more than a century through the agency of a handful
of Englishmen, alien in creed, colour, and custom from the people whom
they rule--men who do not even make their permanent homes in the land
they administer. Now, however efficient, however honest, however
impartial, however disinterested such a rule may be, it cannot obviously
be really agreeable to the peoples ruled. This is the fundamental
weakness of our position. That our rule on these lines has lasted so
long and has been so successful is due not to the fact alone that it has
been backed by British bayonets, but rather to the fact that it has been
remarkably efficient, honest, just, and disinterested--and, above all,
that we have in the past given and secured goodwill.
Superimposed on this underlying irritant, there have been of late years
a number of other more direct causes of unrest. Education, which we gave
to India and were bound to give, had inevitably bred political
aspiration, and an _intelligensia_ had grown up hungry for political
rights and powers. Simultaneously the voracious demands of a centralised
bureaucracy for reports and returns had left the district officer little
leisure for that close touch with the people which in the past meant
confidence and goodwill. Political restlessness had already for some
years begun to manifest itself in anarchical conspiracies and crimes of
violence, when the Great War began. In India, as elsewhere, the reflex
action of the war was a disturbing element. High prices, stifled trade,
high taxation, nationalist longings and ideas of self-determination and
self-government served to reinforce subterranean agitation.
But throughout the war India not only remained calm and restrained, but
her actual contribution to the war, in men and material, was colossal
and was ungrudgingly given. She had a right to expect in return generous
treatment; but what did she get? She got the Rowlatt Bill. Now, of
course, there was a great deal of wicked, lying nonsense talked by
agitators about the provisions of the Rowlatt Bill, and the people were
grossly misled. But the plain fact remains that when India had emerged
from the trying ordeal of the war, not only with honour untarnished, but
having placed us under a great obligation, our first practical return
was to pass a repressive measure, for fear, forsooth, that if it was not
passed then it might be pigeon-holed and forgotten. India asked for
bread and we gave her a stone--a stupid, blundering act, openly
deprecated at the time by all moderate unofficial opinion in India. What
was the result? The Punjab disturbances and the preventive massacre of
the Jallianwala Bagh. I do not propose to dwell on this deplorable and
sadly mishandled matter, save to say that so far from cowing agitation,
it has left a legacy of hate that it will take years to wipe out; and
that the subsequent action of a number of ill-informed persons in
raising a very large sum of money for the officer responsible for that
massacre has further estranged Indians and emphasised in their eyes the
brand of their subjection.
THE RISE OF GHANDI
To India, thus seething with bitterness over the Punjab disturbances,
there was added the Moslem resentment over the fate of Turkey. I was
myself in London and Paris in a humble capacity at the Peace Conference,
and I know that our leading statesmen were fully informed of the Moslem
attitude and the dangers of unsympathetic and dilatory action in this
matter. But an arrogant diplomacy swept all warnings aside and scorned
the Moslem menace as a bogey. What was the result? Troubles in Egypt, in
Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and the Khilifat movement in India.
Hindu agitators were not slow to exploit Moslem bitterness, and for the
first time there was a genuine, if very ephemeral, _entente_ between the
two great rival creeds.
It was in this electric atmosphere that Ghandi, emerging from his
ascetic retirement, found himself an unchallenged leader. Short of
stature, frail, with large ears, and a gap in his front teeth, he had
none of the outward appearance of dominance. His appeal lay in the
simplicity of his life and character, for asceticism is still revered in
the East. But his intellectual equipment was mediocre, his political
ideas nebulous and impracticable to a degree, his programme archaic and
visionary; and from the start he was doomed to fail. The _Hijrat_
movement which he advocated brought ruin to thousands of Moslem homes;
his attack on Government educational establishments brought disaster to
many youthful careers; non-co-operation fizzled out. Government servants
would not resign their appointments, lawyers would not cease to
practise, and title-holders, with a few insignificant exceptions, would
not surrender their titles; the "back to the spinning-wheel" call did
not attract, and the continual failure of Ghandi's predictions of the
immediate attainment of complete _Swaraj_ or self-government, which he
was careful never to define, like hope deferred turned the heart sick.
From being a demi-god Ghandi gradually became a bore, and when he was at
last arrested, tragic to relate, there was hardly a tremor of resentment
through the tired political nerves of India. The arrest was indeed a
triumph of wise timing that does credit to the sagacity of the
Government of India. Had the arrest been effected when the name of
Ghandi was at its zenith, there would have been widespread trouble and
bloodshed. As it was, people were only too glad to be rid of a gadfly
that merely goaded them into infructuous bogs.
I apologise for this long excursus on the somewhat threadbare subject of
the causes of unrest in India. But I want those here present to realise
what potent forces have been at work and to believe that the Indian
generally is not the ungrateful, black-hearted seditionist he is painted
by the reactionary press. India is going through an inevitable stage of
political transition, and we must not hastily judge her peoples--for the
most part so gallant, so kindly, so law-abiding, so lovable--by the
passing tantrums of political puberty.
THE PRESENT SITUATION
As things stand at present, there is a remarkable lull. It would be
futile to predict whether it will last. It is due in part, as I have
suggested, to general political weariness, in part to the drastic action
taken against the smaller agitating fry, in part to the depletion of the
coffers of the extremists, in part to the fact that the extremists are
quarrelling amongst themselves as to their future programme. Some are
for continuing a boycott of the Councils; others are for capturing all
the seats and dominating the legislature; others are for re-beating the
dead horse of non-co-operation. Meanwhile, with disunion in the
extremist camp, the Councils conduct their business on moderate lines,
and, so far as one can judge, with marked temperance and sanity.
The work of the first Councils has indeed been surprisingly good, and
augurs well for the future. India has not yet, of course, by any means
grasped the full significance of representative government. The party
system is still in embryo, although two somewhat vague and nebulous
parties calling themselves the "Nationalists" and the "Democrats" do
exist. But these parties have no clear-cut programme, and they do not
follow the lead of the Ministers, who are regarded, not as representing
the elected members of the Council, but as newly-appointed additional
members of the official bureaucracy. There will doubtless in time be
gradual sorting of politicians into definite groups, but there are two
unbridgeable gulfs in the Indian social system which must always
militate against the building up of a solid political party system:
first, the gulf between Hindu and Moslem, which still yawns as wide as
ever, and second, the gulf between the Brahman and the "untouchables"
who, by the way, have found their fears that they would be downtrodden
under the new Councils completely baseless.
There are and must be breakers ahead. Some we can see, and there are
doubtless others still bigger which we cannot yet glimpse over the
welter of troubled waters. What we can see is this: first, there is a
danger that unless Government and the Councils together can before the
next elections in 1923-24 take definite steps towards the industrial
development and the self-defence of India, the extremist party are
likely to come in in full force and to create a deadlock in the
administration; second, unless the Councils continue to accept a fiscal
policy in accordance with the general interests of Great Britain and the
Empire, there will be trouble. The fiscal position is obscure, but it is
the crux, for the Councils can indirectly stultify any policy
distasteful to them, and this too may mean a deadlock; third, there is a
danger that the Indianisation of the Services will advance much more
rapidly than was ever contemplated, or than is desirable in the
interests of India for many years to come, for the simple reason that
capable young Englishmen of the right stamp will not, without adequate
guarantees for their future, accept employment in India. Those
guarantees can be given satisfactorily by one authority alone, and that
is by the Indian Legislatures voicing popular opinion. For a complex
administration bristling with technical questions, administrative,
political, and economic, it is essential that India should have for many
years to come the assistance of highly-educated Britons with the
tradition of administration in their blood. The Councils will be wise to
recognise this and make conditions which will secure for them in the
future as in the past the best stamp of adventurous Briton.
Finally, the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme, though a capable and
conscientious endeavour to give gradual effect to a wise and generous
policy, has of necessity its weak points. The system of diarchy--of
allotting certain matters to the bureaucratic authority of the Viceroy
and of the Provincial Governors and other matters to the representatives
of the people--is obviously a stop-gap, which is already moribund. The
attempt to fix definite periods at which further advances towards
self-government can be considered is bound to fail: you cannot give
political concessions by a stop-watch; the advance will either be much
more rapid or much slower than the scheme anticipates. Again, the
present basis of election is absurdly small, but any attempt to broaden
it must tend towards adult suffrage, which in itself would appear
impracticable with a population of over 200 millions.
OUR DUTY TO INDIA
It is a mistake, however, in politics to look too far ahead. Sufficient
unto the day. For the time being we may be certain of one thing, and
that is that we cannot break the Indian connection and leave India. Both
our interests and our obligations demand that we should remain at the
helm of Indian affairs for many years to come. That being so, let us
accept our part cheerfully and with goodwill as in the past. Let us try
to give India of our best, as we have done heretofore. Let us regive and
regain, above all things, goodwill. Let us not resent the loss of past
privilege, the changes in our individual status, and let us face the
position in a practical and good-humoured spirit. Let us abandon all
talk of holding India by the sword, as we won it by the sword--because
both propositions are fundamentally false. Let us realise that we have
held India by integrity, justice, disinterested efficiency--and, above
all, by goodwill--and let us continue to co-operate with India in India
for India on these same lines.
EGYPT
BY J.A. SPENDER
Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_, 1896 to 1922; Member of the Special
Mission to Egypt, 1919-1920.
Mr. Spender said:--The Egyptian problem resembles the Indian and all
other Eastern problems in that there is no simple explanation or
solution of it. Among the many disagreeable surprises which awaited us
after the war, none was more disagreeable than the discovery in March,
1919, that Egypt was in a state of rebellion. For years previously we
had considered Egypt a model of imperial administration. We had pulled
her out of bankruptcy and given her prosperity. We had provided her with
great public works which had enriched both pasha and fellah. We had
scrupulously refrained from exploiting her in our own interests. No man
ever worked so disinterestedly for a country not his own as Lord Cromer
for Egypt, and if ever a Nationalist movement could have been killed by
kindness, it should have been the Egyptian. Nor were the Egyptian people
ungrateful. I have talked to Egyptian Nationalists of all shades, and
seldom found any who did not handsomely acknowledge what Great Britain
had done for Egypt, but they asked for one thing more, which was that
she should restore them their independence. "We won it from the Turks,"
they said, "and we cannot allow you to take it from us."
This demand was no new thing, but it was brought to a climax by events
during and after the war. When the war broke out, our representative in
Egypt was still only "Agent and Consul-General," and was theoretically
and legally on the same footing with the representative of all other
Powers; when it ended, he was "High Commissioner," governing by martial
law under a system which we called a "protectorate." This to the
Egyptians seemed a definite and disastrous change for the worse.
Throughout the forty years of our occupation we have most carefully
preserved the theory of Egyptian independence. We have occupied and
administered the country, but we have never annexed it or claimed it to
be part of the British Empire. We intervened in 1882 for the purpose of
restoring order, and five years later we offered to withdraw, and were
only prevented from carrying out our intention because the Sultan of
Turkey declined, at the instigation of another Power, to sign the Firman
which gave us the right of re-occupying the country if order should
again be disturbed. In the subsequent years we gave repeated assurances
to Egyptians and to foreign Powers that we had no intention of altering
the status of the country as defined in its theoretical government by
Khedive, Egyptian Ministers, and Egyptian Council or Assembly. And
though it was true that in virtue of the army of occupation we were in
fact supreme, by leaving the forms of their government untouched and
refraining from all steps to legalise our position we reassured the
Egyptians as to our ultimate objects.
In the eyes of the Egyptians the proclamation of the Protectorate and
the conversion of the "Agent and Consul-General" into a "High
Commissioner" armed with the weapons of martial law seriously prejudiced
this situation, and though they acquiesced for the period of the war,
they were determined to have a settlement with us immediately it was
over, and took us very seriously at our word when we promised to review
the whole situation when that time came. The truth about the
"Protectorate" was that we adopted it as a way out of the legal
entanglement which would otherwise have converted the Egyptians into
enemy aliens when their suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey, entered the war
against us, and we did it deliberately as the preferable alternative to
annexing the country. But we have neither explained to the Egyptians nor
made clear to ourselves what exactly we meant by it, and in the absence
of explanations it was interpreted in Egypt as a first step to the
extinction of Egyptian nationality.
AFTER-WAR MISTAKES
Had we acted wisely and expeditiously at the end of the war we might
even then have avoided the trouble that followed. But when Egyptian
ministers asked leave to come to London in December, 1918, we answered
that the time was not opportune for these discussions, and when the
Nationalist leaders proposed to send a delegation, we said that no good
purpose could be served by their coming to Europe. This heightened the
alarm, and the Nationalists retorted by raising their claims from
"complete autonomy" to "complete independence," and started a violent
agitation. The Government retaliated by deporting Zaghlul to Malta,
whereupon the country broke into rebellion. Lord Allenby now came upon
the scene, and, while suppressing the rebellion, released Zaghlul and
gave him and his delegation the permission to go to Europe which had
been refused in January. It was now decided to send out the Milner
Mission, but there was a further delay of seven months before it
started, and during all that time agitation continued.
When the Mission arrived it quickly discovered that there was no
possible "Constitution under the Protectorate" which would satisfy the
Egyptians, and that the sole alternatives were further suppression or
the discovery of some means of settlement which dispensed with the
Protectorate. The Mission unanimously came to the conclusion that though
the first was mechanically possible if the cost and discredit were
faced, the second was not only feasible but far preferable, and that the
right method was a treaty of Alliance between Great Britain and Egypt,
recognising Egypt as a sovereign State, but affording all necessary
guarantees for imperial interests. Working on those lines the Mission
gradually broke down the boycott proclaimed against them, convinced the
Egyptians of their goodwill, induced all parties of Egyptian
Nationalists to come to London, and there negotiated the basis of the
Treaty which was described in the Report. The main points were that
there must be a British force in the country--not an army of occupation,
but a force to guard Imperial communications--that there must be British
liaison officers for law and order and finance, that the control of
foreign policy must remain in the hands of Great Britain, and that the
Soudan settlement of 1898 must remain untouched, but that with these
exceptions the Government of Egypt should be in fact what it had always
been in theory: a Government of Egyptians by Egyptians.
Had the Government accepted this in December, 1920 (instead of in March,
1922), and instructed Lord Milner to go forward and draft a treaty on
this basis, it is extremely probable that a settlement would have been
reached in a few weeks; but Ministers, unhappily, were unable to make up
their minds, and there was a further delay of three months before the
Egyptian Prime Minister, Adli Pasha, was invited to negotiate with the
Foreign Office. By this time the Nationalist parties which the Mission
had succeeded in uniting on a common platform had fallen apart, and the
extremists once more started a violent agitation and upbraided the
moderates for tamely waiting on the British Government, which had
evidently meant to deceive them. The situation had, therefore, changed
again for the worse when Adli came to London in April, 1921, and it was
made worse still by what followed. The negotiations dragged over six
months, and finally broke down for reasons that have never been
explained, but the probability is that Egypt had now got entangled in
Coalition domestic politics, and that the "Die-Hards" claimed to have
their way in Egypt in return for their consent to the Irish settlement.
The door was now banged in the face of all schools of Egyptian
Nationalists, and Lord Allenby was instructed to send to the Sultan the
unhappy letter in which Egypt was peremptorily reminded that she was a
"part of the communications of the British Empire," and many other
things said which were specially calculated to wound Egyptian
susceptibilities.
The Egyptian Prime Minister resigned, and for the next five months Lord
Allenby endeavoured to govern the country by martial law without an
Egyptian Ministry. Then he came to London with the unanimous support of
British officials in Egypt to tell the Government that the situation was
impossible and a settlement imperative. The Government gave way and
British policy was again reversed, but three opportunities had now been
thrown away, and at the fourth time of asking the difficulties were
greatly increased. The Nationalists were now divided and the Moderates
in danger of being violently attacked if they accepted a moderate
solution. It was found necessary to deport Zaghlul Pasha and to put
several of his chief adherents on trial. Suspicions had been aroused by
the delays and vacillations of the British Government. A settlement by
treaty was now impossible, and Lord Allenby had to give unconditionally
the recognition of sovereignty which the Mission intended to be part of
the treaty, putting the Egyptians under an honourable pledge to respect
British rights and interests. In the circumstances there was nothing
else to do, but it is greatly to be desired that when the constitution
has been completed and the new Assembly convened, an effort should be
made to revert to the method of the treaty which particularly suited the
Egyptian character and would be regarded as a binding obligation by
Egyptians.
THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE
In regard to the future, there is only one thing to do and that is to
work honestly to its logical conclusion the theory now adopted, that
Egypt is a self-governing independent State. Egyptians must be
encouraged to shoulder the full responsibilities of a self-governing
community. It would be folly to maintain a dual system which enabled an
Egyptian Government to shunt the difficult or disagreeable part of its
task on to a British High Commissioner. Whatever the system of
Government, there is no escape for either party from the most intimate
mutual relations. Geography and circumstances decree them, but there is
no necessary clash between the imperial interests which require us to
guard the highway to the East that runs through Egyptian territory, and
the full exercise of their national rights by Egyptians. Egyptians must
remember that for many years to come the world will hold us responsible
for law and order and solvency in Egypt, and we on our part must
remember that Egyptians have the same pride in their country as other
peoples, and that they will never consent to regard it as merely and
primarily "a communication of the British Empire." In any wise solution
of the question any sudden breach with the past will be avoided, and
Egyptians will of their own free will enlist the aid of British
officials who have proved their devotion to the country by loyal and
skilful service. The hope of the future lies in substituting a free
partnership for a domination of one race by the other, and with a genial
and good-humoured people, such as the Egyptians essentially are, there
should be no difficulty in restoring friendship and burying past
animosities. But there must be a real determination on both sides to
make Egyptian independence a success and no disposition on either to
give merely a reluctant consent to the conditions agreed upon by them
and then to throw the onus of failure on the others.
I deeply regret the schism between the different schools of Nationalists
in Egypt. As we have seen in Ireland, Nationalism is threatened from
within as well as from without, and it is a great misfortune that in
settling the Egyptian problem we missed the moment in 1920 when the
different Nationalist parties were all but united on a common platform.
Extremist leaders have the power of compelling even their friends to
deport them and treat them as enemies, and I assume that Zaghlul put
Lord Allenby under this compulsion, when he decided that his deportation
was necessary. But Zaghlul was one of the few Nationalist leaders who
were of peasant origin, and his followers stand for something that needs
to be strongly represented in the Government if it is not to take its
complexion merely from the towns and the wealthy interests. The fellah
is a very different man from what he was in the days of Ismail, and it
is improbable that he will again submit to oppression as his forefathers
did but it is eminently desirable that there should be in the Government
men whom he would accept as leaders and whom he could trust to speak for
him.
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