NATURE 



361 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1897. 



THE STORY OF AN INDIAN PROVINCE. 

 The North-Western Provinces of India. By W. Crooke, 

 B.C.S. (retired). Pp. 361. (London : Methuen and 

 Co., 1897.) 



THIS book professes to be "an attempt to tell the 

 story of one of the greatest of our Indian 

 Provinces from the social point of view " ; and no one 

 who reads it will deny that the attempt has been com- 

 pletely successful. The author has had vast experience 

 as an Indian official ; he is well known as an authority 

 on Indian religions and folk-lore (see the review in 

 Nature, April 22, 1897, of his work on "The Popular 

 Religion and Folk- Lore of Northern India"), and, as 

 Superintendent of the Ethnographical Survey of the 

 N.W.P., he has had unique opportunities of studying the 

 life and customs of the people. Lastly, he possesses 

 the enviable faculty of being able to express the results 

 of tedious and painstaking observations in a most read- 

 able form. In fact, we have here, in a nutshell, an 

 amount of information which could only be obtained 

 otherwise either by a similar experience or by a diligent 

 study of many ponderous Blue-books. The style is easy 

 and pleasant, and possesses no small merit from the 

 literary point of view. The keen intelligent interest of 

 the writer in his subject communicates itself to the reader, 

 while his sympathy with the beauties of nature gives to 

 the book something of the charm which characterises 

 Bishop Heber's diary. 



.\\. the present time, especially, Mr. Crooke's work will 

 be welcome as affording information on those serious 

 questions which have of late excited an unusual degree 

 of interest. Now that famine, plague, and, in some 

 degree, disaffection, are taxing the resources of British 

 administration, it is well to know what steps have been 

 taken in times past to meet similar dangers and diffi- 

 culties ; and it is not too much to say that little doubt will 

 be left in the impartial reader's mind that, whatever 

 may have been the shortcomings of British rule, it has 

 at least accumulated a vast store of knowledge and ex- 

 perience which enables it to cope, with a great degree 

 of success, with calamities the effects of which would, 

 in bygone ages, have been appalling beyond measure. 

 And it must not be forgotten that, in India, there are 

 many causes which combine to make progress not only 

 slow and uncertain, but even sometimes dangerous. 

 To take, for example, one of the difficulties which the 

 ultra-conservative instinct of the people places in the 

 way of the prevention of famine. Elsewhere the natural 

 reliefof a congested population is afforded by emigration, 

 but— 



" This people, again, definitely refuses to avail itself of 

 that relief by emigration to less congested areas, which 

 led the surplus population of Ireland to the American 

 continent, and is now driving Italians to Brazil or 

 Argentina, and the Chinaman to the Malay Peninsula 

 and the islands of the Southern Sea. The State is thus 

 here confronted with a problem which would tax the 

 resources of the greatest governments. There is, perhaps, 

 no more pathetic situation in the whole range of human 

 history than to watch these dull, patient masses stumbling 



NO. 1 45 I, VOL. 56] 



in their traditional way along a path which can lead only 

 to suffering, most of them careless of the future, marrying 

 and giving in marriage, fresh generations ever encroach- 

 ing on the narrow margin which separates them from 

 destitution." 



Even greater obstacles to reform are those due to 

 religious or social causes. Sanitary reform, for instance, 

 must necessarily interfere with habits and customs all of 

 which are sanctioned by a long tradition, and some of 

 which are actually regarded as sacred. 



"The progress made in sanitation during the last thirty 

 years serves only to emphasise the fact that the task is of 

 stupendous difficulty, that much of it is beyond the 

 power of any Government to undertake unless it throws 

 to the winds all considerations of finance and all regard 

 for the prejudices of the people. . . . The constant 

 crusade carried on to enforce some degree of cleanliness 

 among the town population has undoubtedly been to 

 some extent effective. . . . But as for a general crusade 

 against filth in rural India the people will not endure it, 

 and no Government in its senses would seriously propose 

 to wage it." 



Of course, if sanitation is not to be enforced, and if 

 over-crowding is not to be prevented, how can plague be 

 averted ? And, as has been seen quite recently, the 

 means of stamping out plague cannot be put into practice 

 without grave risk of exciting the religious or caste 

 susceptibilities of the people. 



Some curious results come from the application of 

 Western ideas to Eastern circumstances. We accept as 

 fundamental axioms of law and justice the doctrines of 

 the equality of all men in the eye of the law, and of the 

 binding force of contracts legally made ; and it is not 

 imaginable that English government could prevail any- 

 where apart from these axioms. But it cannot be denied 

 that rigid adherence to them has brought, and must 

 necessarily bring, not only unpopularity to the Govern- 

 ment, but also serious economic troubles to the people 

 themselves. The first cause has, by completely upsetting 

 all their ideas of the distinctions of caste, made British 

 rule extremely distasteful to the nobility and higher 

 classes generally. 



"They disapprove of the cold impartiality of our law, 

 which has abolished the traditional distinction between 

 the gentleman and the menial, and makes it possible for 

 the serf to drag the Raja before one of our courts." 



The second cause has results far more serious. We 

 have had some instances recently in England of the 

 power which the law, by enforcing the terms of a legal 

 contract, gives to the usurer over his victim. But this 

 abuse is in India carried to an extent of which we can 

 have no conception. 



" It is, in the opinion of the most competent authori- 

 ties, not an exaggeration to say that three-fourths of the 

 tenantry are indebted to the amount of a year's rent at 

 least." 



And the remedy for this terrible state of affairs, in 

 which the most worthy portion of the community is 

 surely being brought under the power of the least 

 worthy ? That is the problem which for many years has 

 exercised, and is now exercising, many anxious minds, 

 for on its solution the future prosperity of a great portion 

 of India depends. Expedients innumerable have been 

 suggested, and some of these cures have made the 

 disease worse. 



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