“In taking up an attitude of active hostility to the important portions of the reform proposals, our Anglo-Indian brethren are, we venture to say, not acting in the best interests of this country, present or prospective, nor in the best and enduring interest of the community to which they belong. By engaging in the unwholesome agitation into which they have entered they are setting up a pernicious example to their Indian fellow countrymen; nor is their action calculated to advance the cause of justice and of good government”.
JANUARY 15, 1909
The reception of the reforms
THE LETTERS ON LORD MORLEY’S REFORM PROPOSALS WHICH We have been publishing in these columns from Indians of note in this Presidency concluding today with that of Mr. Nagamiah, the talented ex-Dewan Peishkar of Travancore, show that intelligent and educated public opinion views with much gratification and thankfulness the instalment of reform indicated in the joint proposals of the Secretary of State and of the Government of India. So far as Indian opinion is concerned, there are unmistakable tokens of appreciation and of a sense of relief from every part of the country that the proposed reforms are regarded as a timely, judicious and statesmanlike solution of the impasse into which things have drifted in the country. In placing his proposals of the scheme of Reform before the House of Lords, in a speech of stately dignity, chaste diction and farseeing statesmanship, Lord Morley said that it was his desire to know what reception they would meet with in this country before they were embodied in the form of a bill to be introduced at the next session of Parliament. In the gracious speech of His Majesty the King Emperor, with which Parliament was prorogued on the 21st December last, the following significant words occur: “My Government have, therefore, felt justified in pressing forward the measures that have long been under their consideration, for enlarging the share of the Indian peoples in the administration of the country. These measures have been laid before you and I earnestly hope that they will be received in the spirit of mutual trust and goodwill in which they are proposed.” We commend the words we have italicised to the earnest and deep attention of that section of the Anglo-Indian community which seems bent upon crying down the Reforms or a portion of them, in a spirit far from conducive to strengthening brotherly feelings between the Indian and Anglo-Indian communities, showing likewise a lack of a spirit of loyal cooperation in regard to the declared intentions and policy of His Majesty and of His Government. In taking up an attitude of active hostility to the important portions of the Reform proposals, our Anglo-Indian brethren, are, we venture to say, not acting in the best interests of this country, present or prospective, nor in the best and enduring interests of the community to which they belong. By engaging in the unwholesome agitation into which they have entered they are setting up a pernicious example to their Indian fellowcountrymen; nor is their action calculated to advance the cause of justice and of good government. That portion of the Reform proposals which is apparently viewed with great disfavour by a portion of the Anglo-Indian community is the one relating to the appointment of Indians in the Executive Council. It is difficult to discover any legitimate and reasonable ground of opposition for this measure. Considerations of justice, of policy and wise statesmanship imperatively require the step to be taken. It has indeed been too long deferred. The principle that no Indian shall by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent, colour or any of them be disabled from holding any high office under the Crown was established so long ago as 1833, by Statutes 3 and 4 of William IV. The very reasons which the Parliamentary statute has declared not to be operative as a bar to Indians being raised to high offices, have been in practice for three quarters of a century made so to act. Honest English statesmen have not hesitated to denounce this as a political hypocrisy and injustice. It is the desire to perpetuate a racial cleavage between the rulers and the ruled, the ruling race and the subject race that has led to what Lord Lytton rightly characterised as “breaking to the heart the words of promise they had uttered to the ear”. Intelligent Anglo-Indians must admit that the time has now arrived when it is futile and even dangerous to indulge in the cant about racial inferiority in order to debar Indians from climbing beyond a certain step in the official ladder, to say that in the official hierarchy a native of India shall go thus far only and no further. We have said advisedly that the arrogant assertion of racial superiority is dangerous under existing conditions in India, because, singularly enough, in the last number of the Antiseptic just received, in an article republished elsewhere, on “The Patho-genesis of Anarchism”, the following passage occurs: –
“We are told by eminent historians that the guiding principle of Jacobins and French anarchists was political equality. That is also the ideal of Nihilists who are anarchists of a particular type. And the Bengal anarchists appear to be no exception to the rule. Political equality seems to be their object too. But with them political equality is inextricably mixed up with racial equality. And the not infrequent public assertion of racial superiority by the less thoughtful European residents in this country over their Indian fellow-citizens may not unnaturally have fanned into flame the dormant desire for absolute equality lurking in the minds of the potential anarchists of Bengal.”
Be this as it may, there can be no doubt that as a matter of justice and common fairness, the claims of Indians of proved capacity and character should be placed upon a par with those of Englishmen in respect of a reasonable proportion of the highest offices in the country; otherwise, a standing source of national irritation and wrong will subsist. Many years ago, the late Sir Henry Fawcett remarked in the House of Commons as follows: “Sir Madava Row administered Travancore with so much skill as justly to entitle him to be considered the Turgot of India. He found Travancore when he went there in 1849 in the lowest stage of degradation. He has left it a model State. This is the kind of man for whom we have no proper opening at a time when our resources are declared to be inelastic and when, if the opium revenue failed us, we should not know where to turn for the amount required.” It seems to us that apart from all considerations bearing upon the efficiency of and improvement in the administration, consequent on the appointment of Indians as Members to the Executive Councils, it would help to remove a badge, so to speak, of racial inferiority, as well as satisfy the claims of national justice. Mr. H. W. Nevinson, a keen and disinterested observer writes in his book on the “New Spirit in India” referring to the desirable change of attitude on the part of Anglo-Indians towards Indians: “If the phrase ‘rulers and ruled’ died too, and if our social philosophers would cease to drone out with weary ineptitude that ‘East is East and West is West’ the situation would be much eased.” In a speech delivered sometime after his arrival in Madras, His Excellency Sir Arthur Lawley observed as follows: – “If you ask me to define in a single phrase what I conceive should be the true relation between Europeans and Indians of the country, I should say it would be one of ‘manly comradeship’. Think for a moment what that phrase implies. It does not mean the mere passive attitude of the arm-chair sentimentalist, the mere attitude of sympathy and goodwill, but it means for both races devotion of their energies to the attainment of one end; it means the mutual understanding of the modes and actions of both; it means experience of difficulties faced together and the striving shoulder to shoulder, side by side, towards one common goal, the good of India.” This is a most just and statesmanlike view of the situation and the association of Indians with Englishmen in the Executive Councils is, therefore, a legitimate and necessary step in the right direction which all the members of the Anglo-Indian community, as much as Indians, ought ungrudgingly to welcome, and make fruitful of common and public benefit.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I