ON IMPERIAL CITIZENSHIP. 427 



expect a reasonable adhei'ence to the theory and practice of democracy, 

 so far as we have developed ihcm in those parts of our Empire which 

 have made most progress towards political freedom. 



If these are the qualifications for admission to full Imperial Citizen- 

 ship, it is clear that some of the members of our great Imperial federa- 

 tion have a long way to travel before they can possibly acquire them. 

 Some, indeed, cannot hope to reach them within any measurable period ; 

 and, so far as we can foresee, there must remain certain classes of our 

 fellow-subjects whose civic status nmst be imperfect and limited in 

 any part of the Empire. But there are other and far more numerous 

 and important classes which are neai'er the desired standard, and the 

 task to our hand is to help them on towards the goal. I thus come to 

 the particular angle from which I was invited to participate in this 

 discussion as the representative of India. And I make no excuse for 

 taking India as the outstanding type of those higher races to whom the 

 status of Imperial Citizenship is a question of practical politics and 

 immediate interest. It is the stratum of our Imperial section of the 

 world which is nearest our own in its civilisation, traditions, and philo- 

 sophy ; and India's commanding position in our commerce and foreign 

 policy raises the question of its status into the first rank of importance. 



The issue, it must be admitted, has only recently become acute. 

 Since India became a part of the British Empire it has enjoyed little 

 time or opportunity for anything outside its own borders. It long 

 accepted the position of tutelage, and left us to look after its international 

 concerns. It was fully occupied with its own domestic affairs, with 

 its recurring sectarian troubles, and its own reachings-out after political 

 liberty. Poverty and ignorance have played their part in checking any 

 wider outlook or aspirations. For the small minority who could rise 

 above those crushing handicaps, the preoccupations of industrial advance 

 and constitutional change left little space for Imperial issues. Unfor- 

 tunately, too, some of the earlier points of contact with those issues 

 originated, so far as India was concerned, in episodes of a secondary 

 and sordid character ; for the first stirrings of an Imperial consciousness 

 were aroused by the grievances of Indians who had emigrated as 

 indentui'ed labourers to our sugar-growing Colonies. Disclosures of 

 the treatment which many of those emigrants I'eceived in Fiji were 

 certainly not calculated to encourage a sense of citizenship. They 

 evoked bitter resentment in India against our Colonies, and discredited 

 the whole system of emigration under contract. Then followed the 

 grievance of differential legislation, municipal and otherwise, against 

 Indians in South Africa. This was nothing new, for I remember, as 

 far back as 1906, talking with a group of Sindhi traders in the Pretoria 

 market-place, and being assured by them that they had been better off 

 under the Kruger regime than they were under the British. This 

 feeling grew until the belief became general in India that helotry, and 

 not citizenship, was the status designed for Indians in several of our 

 British Possessions. 



The spreading agitation on the subject was silenced by the War. 

 With it there came a spontaneous outburst of loyalty, a temporary 

 shelving of grievances, and — among all the best elements in India — .1 



