One cannot, it is obvious, simultaneously make peace and war. Our rulers decided in favour of war. The theory of those who thought that it would be a good thing for the world to make peace in 1916 was never tested. We know by experiment that it was an extremely bad thing to go on making war to the bitter end. To have made a premature peace might have been still worse; on the other hand it might have been better. It remains a matter of opinion. Nobody can ever know. There is no science of politics, because there is no such thing as a political laboratory where experiments can be made.
The truth of the theories about the capacity or incapacity of the Indians to govern themselves can only be tested experimentally. They are at present merely the divergent opinions of the interested parties. I happen not to be an interested party; (for I do not consider that the mere fact of being, on the one hand, an Englishman and, on the other, a liberal with prejudices in favour of freedom and self-determination, makes me directly responsible for either the integrity of the British Empire or the liberation of the Indian people); it is easy for me to suspend judgment until the production of proof.
But if I were a member of the I.C.S., or if I held shares in a Calcutta jute mill (I wish I did), I should believe in all sincerity that British rule had been an unmixed blessing to India and that the Indians were quite incapable of governing themselves. And if I were an educated Indian, I should most certainly have gone to gaol for acting on my belief in the contraries of these propositions. Moreover, even if, as an Indian, I shared the Englishman’s belief, even if it could somehow be proved that Swaraj would bring, as its immediate consequences, communal discord, religious and political wars, the oppression of the lower by the higher castes, inefficiency and corruption, in a word, general anarchy—even if this could be proved, I think I should still go on trying to obtain Swaraj. There are certain things about which it is not possible, it is not right to take the reasonable, the utilitarian view.
CAWNPORE
All this political talk, all this political action even—I begin to wonder, after eight and a half hours on the floor of the Congress tent, whether it isn’t entirely a waste of time. Political power is the invariable concomitant of economic power. Be rich, control your country’s finance and industry, and you will find that you have political leadership thrown in as a casual perquisite.
Indian industries were deliberately discouraged by the East India Company, which found itself able to make more money by selling English manufactured goods to the Indians than by selling Indian manufactured goods to the English. When, after a considerable lapse of time, modern industrialism began to be introduced into India, it was introduced under foreign auspices and it is still, along with the Indian banking system, mainly foreign-owned. The foreigners rule; it is inevitable. But the All-India Congress goes on talking and acting in terms of politics. One might as well try to cure headaches by applying corn plasters to the toes.
CAWNPORE
My prejudices happen to be in favor of democracy, self-determination, and all the rest of it. But political convictions are generally the fruit of chance rather than of deliberate choice. If I had been brought up a little differently, I might, I suppose, have been a Fascist and an apostle of the most full-blooded imperialism. But when I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I don’t care two pins about political principles. Provided that it guaranteed my safety and left me in peace to do my work, I should live just as happily under an alien despotism as under the British constitution. If, in the past, men have fought for democracy and made revolutions for the attainment of self-government, it has generally been because they hoped that these things would lead to better administration than could be had under despotism and foreign dominion. Once better government has been obtained, democracy and self-determination—as such and in themselves—cease to interest those who, a short time before, had passionately fought for them.
CAWNPORE
Serfs, burghers, nobles—we read about them in our history books; but we find it difficult to realise what mediæval society was really like. To understand our European Middle Ages, one should go to India. Hereditary aristocracies still exist in the West—exist, but pour rire; they are scarcely more than a joke. It is in India that one learns what it meant, six hundred years ago, to be a villein, a merchant, a lord. Aristocracy, there, exists in fact, as well as in name. Birth counts. You come into the world predestined to superiority or abjection; it is a kind of social Calvinism. Some are born with Grace; they are Brahmans or Kshatryas. The rest are damned from the beginning. Outcasts, peasants, money-lenders, merchants—the Indian hell has lower and higher circles; but even the upper circles are only the attics of the social abyss.
Almost without exception Indian politicians profess democratic principles. They envisage a popularly governed British dominion, ultimately a republic. Government by the people, for the people, and so on. But the majority of the influential ones are members of the highest castes, hereditary wise men and warriors. Their principles may be democratic, but their instincts remain profoundly aristocratic. Transplant a few mediæval cardinals and dukes across the centuries into modern Europe; you might convince them that democracy was a good thing, but you could hardly expect them to forget from one day to the next their prejudices about villeins and burgesses, their conviction of their own inherent nobility. I have seen high-caste educated Indians treating their inferiors in a way which to a bourgeois like myself, born in even so moderately democratic a society as that of England, seemed unthinkably high-handed. I envied them the sense of assured and inalienable superiority which enabled them so naturally to play the part of the mediæval noble.
That the lower-caste masses would suffer, at the beginning, in any case, from a return to Indian autonomy seems almost indubitable. Where the superiority of the upper classes to the lower is a matter of religious dogma, you can hardly expect the governing few to be particularly careful about the rights of the many. It is even something of a heresy to suppose that they have rights. Any indigenous government under Swaraj would necessarily be in the nature of a despotic oligarchy—that is, until education has spread so widely that another and more democratic form of government becomes practicable. One can only hope, piously, that the despotism will be paternal and that the education will spread quickly.
CAWNPORE
From its advertisements much may be learned of a nation’s character and habits of thought. The following brief anthology of Indian advertisements is compiled from newspapers, magazines, medical catalogues, and the like. Several of the most characteristic specimens are taken from the Cawnpore Congress Guide, an official publication intended for the use of delegates and interested visitors. It is with one of these appeals to India’s most enlightened public that I make a beginning.
Beget a son and Be Happy by using the “SON BIRTH PILLS,” my special secret Hindu Shastrick preparation, according to directions. Ladies who have given birth to daughters only will surely have sons next, and those who have sons must have male issues once again by the Grace of God. Fortunate persons desirous of begetting sons are bringing this marvellous Something into use for brightening their dark homes and making their lives worth their living. It is very efficacious and knows no failure. Self praise is no recommendation. Try and be convinced. But if you apply, mentioning this publication, with full history of your case, along with a consultation fee of Rupees Ten (Foreign one guinea) only giving your “Word of Honour” to give me a suitable reward (naming the amount) according to your means and position in life, just on the accomplishment of your desire in due course of time, you can have the same Free, absolutely free. Act immediately, for this free offer may not remain open indefinitely.
Here are some pleasing Hair-oil advertisements from various sources.
Dr. ——’s Scented Almond Oil. Best preparation to be used as hair-oil for men who do mental work. The effects of almond oil on brain are known to everybody.
Jabukusum is a pure vegetable oil, to which medicinal ingredients and the perfume have been added to prevent all affectations (sic) of the hair and the brain.
There are several panaceas on the Indian market. There is, for example, Sidda Kalpa Makaradhwaja which “is a sure and infallible specific for all Diseases, and it never fails to effect a satisfactory cure in the patient, be his ailment whatever it may. Among the various diseases amenable to its administration, to state a few, are the following:—Debility, general or nervous, including Nervous Prostration, due to whatever cause, Loss of Memory, Giddiness and Insanity . . . Asthma and Consumption, all stomach troubles . . . cholera . . . all Kidney and Bladder Troubles . . . all Acute and Chronic Venereal Diseases . . . Leprosy of all kinds, White, Black, Red, etc. . . . Rheumatism, Paralysis, Epilepsy . . . Hysteria, Sterility . . . and all Fevers, including Malaria, Pneumonia, Influenza, and such other poisonous ones.”
Not a bad medicine, but
