LAND AXD WATER 
December 4, 19 15. 
INDIA TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW. 
By the Editor. 
THERE is an article in tlic current number of 
lliat admirable quarterly Tlic Round Table on 
" India and the Imperial. Conference,." which 
invites the attention -to this important segment 
of the British Empire. People at home are apt to accept 
the present position in India as a 'matter of course ; they 
are inclined to overlook that no small part of British 
policy in the East for the past fifty years has been directed 
towards safeguarding British interests in that part of the 
i,'lobe in the day of .Armageddon. As the Round Table 
writer observes : " Eighteen months ago, if the question 
had been ask^d, ' How. would India behave i;i the event of 
a vast European war in which (ireat Britain was involved?' 
even those who know the country best would lia\ e found 
it difficult to give an assured reply." 
Though it is undoubtedly true that we hold India 
by the strength of. pur sea-power, and that it is less 
British bayonets in Hindustan than British battleships in 
the North Sea which arc responsible for the present sense 
of security, wc must not forget that the -Indian princes 
and peoples had rallied to our side before that sea-power 
w;is assured. The Maharajah of Mysore's' sjiontaneous 
ofter of fifty lakhs of rupees to the Supreme Government 
towards the expenses of the .war was the beginning of 
that Homeric list of gifts and contributions, to which 
there seems to be no end. This money had been saved 
for expenditure on public works, and Mysore, by his 
diversion of this wealth to the prosecution of a European 
War, publicly proclaimed to all intents and in a manner 
plain to the whole of the Indian Empire, that in his opinion 
reproductive works and other benefits and advantages 
of civil life were dependent upon the stability of British 
TvAc. It was not only an act of splendid loyalty, but 
of shining statesmanship. 
' Normal Unrest. 
Unrest is normal in India, indeed it may tse said that 
it^ absence would signify the failure of British rule, for it 
is the ferment of the living forces of progress and new ideas 
which can only exist where there is a large^ measure of 
freedom. If there were no imrest, it would imply that 
we had brought the subject-races into a state of servitude 
much as has prevailed during the last few decades in 
, Alsace-Lorraine and in German Poland. Danger in India 
lies not in unrest, natural unrest, but in-, the failure 
of autTlority to stamp out those ebullitions of unrest, 
wKich through one cause or another come suddenly to a 
head. Had there been a strong man — a man of action 
and quick decision — in Meerut on that May Sunday eight 
and fifty years ago, in all human probability there would 
have been no Mutiny, and forty years later "events on the 
North West Frontier would have taken a very different 
course but for vacillation and weakness at Simla and 
' Peshawar. The last sixteen months have fortunately 
found authority in India strong in this respect. The 
wild fire of sedition has never been allowed to get 
a lirm hold on the dry jungles of discontent and local 
ambitions, which are an integral part of the country and 
not the outcome of European turmoil ; the flame has 
burst out here and there, but it has been stamped out 
quickly and decisively, and it is to behoped that a mis- 
taktn sense of clemency in high quarters \ViU not Weaken 
this strength of action. ■- 
Says the writer in the Round " Tabk n«-" After 
many centuries there came from outside India 
for the first time a power strong and just enough 
to stop the fighting and rapine, and to secure to each 
.Tian the fruits of his industry. The humbler people 
prospered, but the chiefs' and nobles' occupation was 
gone." This is no doubt largely true, and when 
V he proceeds to point out how the European war 
has given to the chiefs and nobles a new oppor- 
tunity to. win honour and fame on the field of battle, 
he rightly emphasises one aspect we are apt to overlook. 
But the present writer is tempted to ask, have the humbler 
people prospered invariably under British rule ? \\'e 
hear a great deal about the disquieting and disintegrating 
infiuences of Western education and religions, but little or 
noihinjT about tbe,eoual.or greater, fjlisruptiua. {orce of 
machinery. It is a mere , accident that British rule in. 
India, should have-svnchronised with the rapid develop- 
ment of mechanical power : it cannot be said that the 
latter is due to the former. Had an Englishman never set 
foot "on the Coromandel Coast or the Red Ensign .never 
flown beneath IMalabar Point, machinery would still 
have- found its wav to the Peninsula, and the whirr -of 
its wheels have sounded a mournful requiem for scores 
of village industries. Say what we will, British rule, 
as regarded bythe village weaver, potter, coppersmith,- 
etc.<(bear in mind these are not individuals, but families 
and communities), has not been an era of undiluted pros- 
perity,-, and to ignore this fact is to be . culpably blind. 
By'ariolher strange irony the British rulers of India' 
who Have been turning the country upside down in their 
eagerness to prolong life and to improve health have for 
all their boasted hygienic wisdom ' been powerless to 
check the ravages of" that very ancient scourge — bubonic 
plague. Is it therefore any wonder that the East is still 
inclined to look on Western sanitation as 'a vain thing, 
and' to express annoyance in its own way when it inter- 
feres with old traditions and customs ? 
In the article under review, the story is told of a 
witty Indian citizen of Bombay, who said to an English- 
man ; "It has taken us a hundred years to teach you 
how to govern us. Do you think we are going to begin 
all oVer again with another nation " And that nation 
Germany! — Germany, who counts among its public 
methods of quick pacification the massacre of innocents 
and the defilement of women ! Had Germany ever 
obtained firm, foothold -in/ Asia we can now see the 
subterranean -perils which would have threatened us. 
Thc/East has the child's quickness of perception of 
human character, and the German, with his innate 
contempt for dark-skinned races, and his inability to 
comprehend the significance of justice and fair play, 
has never been able to obtain any strong persona' 
influence inside India, but working from outside, 
through ag'entsrand with lavish bribery, our Dominior 
might hav6 been undermined. 
But the millennium is not about to dawn in the East, 
nor need we ' anticipate its first rays directly peace be 
restored in Europe. If for no other reason than tc 
distract our thoughts from the events of the moment, 
it is pleasant to speculate on the future, wherefore 
we suggest to those to whom India in the years to come 
happens to be a lively problem to read this Round Table 
article, though the present writer is not able to feel the 
same enthusiasm over India's demand to be represented 
on the Imperial Conference. 
If India bears her full share of the shock of war ; 
suffers as the other parts of the Empire suffer, endure; 
to the end as they endure, she will have won the right tc 
be treated in the Councils of Empire on the same levei 
as they are treated. And if she comes to the Imperial 
Conference she will bring her own Imperial needs and 
expect them to be settled in an Imperial spirit. But is the 
Imperial Conference for all its fine sounding title capable 
of this ? Remember it is an old Eastern saying, oldei 
than the Gospels : " The son asked bread of. the father, 
and he gave him a stone." Representation at'the Imperial 
Conference irtiplies in the Indian mind something fax 
more than for a native gentleman to sit at table irTDownins 
Street with- ■tfe> Prime Ministers of our self-governing 
Dominions. The problems of Empire after the war are 
to be new problems, but no less weighty than those 
which preceded it. The Imperial Conference has its ' 
uses, but a deliberative assemblv of greater permanence 
and wider powers will be necessary if the British Empire 
IS to assume a more concrete form in the future. And ir 
this assembly, not merely Indiai, but the component part; 
of India will have to be adequately represented.- Britain 
has steered a safer course among the reefs and shoals oi 
the Oriental dominion than even her friends, to say nothing 
of her enemies, would have believed. Her coijjpass has 
been justice and her sounding-lead sympathy.' If we 
continue to follow the same course and to adhere to the 
same methods, one cannot sec there is anv reason to be 
afraid over the issues of the F.nrooenn «-nr. 
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