Raj

by Lawrence, James

  The chief beneficiaries from the educational revolution were its most zealous supporters, the bhadralok. It was a term used for the Bengali upper and middle classes and indicated a combination of eminence, wealth and respectability. From the beginning of the century its members had recognised the value of European knowledge and the part it could play in a Bengali renaissance. Then and for many years to come bhadralok loyalty tended to focus on their province rather than India as a whole. In the 1820s, Rammohan Roy claimed ‘the greater our intercourse with Europeans, the greater will be our improvement in literary, social and political affairs’.21 When this process of regeneration had been accomplished, Indians might be free to take control of their destiny. Twenty or so years later, when the Governor-General Lord Ellenborough was discussing Macaulay’s plans for Indian education with the Calcutta businessman and philanthropist, Dwarkanath Tagore, he remarked: ‘You know if these gentlemen succeed in educating the natives of India, to the utmost of their utmost desire, we should not remain in the country for three months.’ ‘Not three weeks,’ answered Tagore.22 No one then or for many years to come could foretell when this might occur.

  What the education system did produce was a body of men, all from prosperous backgrounds, who, by the last quarter of the century, were chafing against what they conceived as intolerable official constraints on their ambitions. The glittering prize for the Indian graduate was passing the examination for the ICS. Even failure carried a certain status: in 1912 a newspaper job advertisement asked for ‘a B.A., or Failed Civil’.23 Man Ghose believed that, to compete successfully, it was imperative for an Indian to study in Britain, where he would ‘acquire that refinement and independence of thought and action that alone can place them on an equal footing with Englishmen’.24 For a time in the late 1860s, the government contemplated awarding scholarships for Indians to study at British universities, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would favour Bengalis. There was some consolation; the authorities decided that they would appoint a number to middle-ranking posts without a prior examination. Indian penetration of the higher echelons of the government remained difficult and progress was slow; in 1909, 65 out of the 1,244 members of the ICS were Indian.

  Behind this measure and all the Raj’s dealings with the educated Indian classes was a profound feeling that they were a tiny minority whose ambitions had to be actively discouraged. Most were high-caste Bengalis whose advancement to positions of authority over other Indians would exacerbate existing caste and religious divisions, for the official mind was convinced that, however many examinations a native passed, he could never shed his religious prejudices. These were indelible and rendered their owner incapable of strict impartiality. Besides, the educated Bengali was imagined to be the host to a number of moral shortcomings which disbarred him from the highest offices: he preferred words to action, lacked natural authority, was prone to venality and crumpled in a crisis. Dufferin detected in the ‘Bengali babu’ an affinity with the Irish nationalist, with both possessing ‘perverseness, vivacity and cunning’.

  The educated Indian was sometimes a comic figure on account of his occasional malapropisms, known as ‘babuisms’. Lytton found them delightful and relayed them home for the amusement of, among others, Queen Victoria. One, selected by him, may serve as an example of others. It concerned an English judge who enquired why an Indian barrister’s female client was not in court. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Chunder [Chandra] Ram, but is your client an adult?’ ‘No, my Lord,’ was the reply. ‘She is an adul-tress.’ Underlying this mockery was the feeling that the babu acquired knowledge without ever understanding it properly.

  British prejudices were as ingrained as Indian were supposed to be, and were mirrored in a widespread antipathy towards the bhadralok, individually and en masse. The servants of the Raj found it all but impossible to regard an educated Bengali as an equal, something which the latter found genuinely bewildering. The barriers were sensed by Bolanath Chandra, a Calcutta graduate and son of a Hindu bania, who was full of admiration for the British and the way in which they were modernising India. Travelling in Awadh in the mid-1860s he detected an unofficial colour bar which excluded him from the company of Europeans:

  A native may read Bacon, Shakespeare, get over his religious prejudices, form political associations, and aspire to a seat in the legislature – he may do all these and many things more, but he cannot make up his mind to board at an English hotel.25

  Nonetheless, Chandra saw India moving towards a better future. Hitherto incapable of ‘the construction of a civil polity’ which was not despotic, his countrymen were on the threshold of doing so. The ‘political science’ which men like himself were learning would eventually create a sense of national coherence and purpose among a people who still lacked ‘any patriotism or philanthropy’. And yet, Chandra could not quite shake off his private feelings, for an antagonism towards Islam colours his writing. ‘The fusion of the Mahomedan element to form a national Indian mass requires the melting point of granite’ he observed, unintentionally adding to British doubts about the ultimate judicial and bureaucratic impartiality of even the most sophisticated Hindu.26

  British political thought and systems and their adoption in India were among the range of scientific, religious and philosophical subjects debated and discussed by the many associations of educated Indians which had been springing up since the middle of the century. Members of these bodies investigated India’s past, examined the foundations of its faiths and contrived ways in which to synthesise Indian traditions of thought with such new European ideas as liberalism and utilitarianism. Like Chandra, they were searching for the intellectual basis for an Indian renaissance, and a few became convinced that this would culminate with self-rule and the adoption of representative government in the British fashion. Members of these associations were well-off, educated professional and business men, the nucleus of India’s middle class. Under the Raj they enjoyed complete freedom to assemble and there was never any official attempt to interfere with or restrict what passed during their meetings. Many members were in active public life, serving on the committee which ran Calcutta university, the Calcutta bar association and on the handful of municipal councils. These earnest, well-intentioned men comprised an embryonic political class.

  III

  These Indian societies might have continued with common goals but separate existences for many years, but for the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon. He replaced Lytton in 1880 and was welcomed by educated Indians, who hoped that he would bring with him the fresh and reforming air of Gladstonian Liberalism. Indians who had followed British politics closely were well aware that the Liberal leader had denounced the 1878 invasion of Afghanistan and had pledged himself to defend the rights of oppressed peoples everywhere. One of Ripon’s first measures was the repeal of Lytton’s Vernacular Press Act which restrained political comment in native-language newspapers. The time seemed full of promise for India’s educated classes. Two of them, Behari Lal Gupta and Romesh Chandra Dutt, then a district officer, proposed that Indian judges and magistrates should be given the right to try Europeans who, hitherto, could insist on trial by a British justice.27 The suggestion was taken up by Sir Courteney Ilbert, the law member of the viceregal council, who put forward the appropriate amendment to the Indian legal code in February 1883.28

  For Indians the change was greeted as a gesture towards equality under the law. The European community was horrified and erupted in fury. The reverberations reached Kipling in Lahore and he told his sister that, ‘Old stagers say that race feeling has never been so high since the Mutiny.’29 Something of the heat and passion of the British reaction to this proposal can be seen in one outburst:

  Would you like to live in a country where at any moment your wife would be liable to be sentenced on a false charge of slapping an Ayah to three days’ imprisonment, the Magistrate being a copper-coloured Pagan who probably worships the Linga, and certainly exults in any opportunity of showing that he can insu
lt white persons with impunity.30

  This simultaneous appeal to racial, religious and sexual prejudice was typical of the hundreds which poured from India’s European community during 1883 and early 1884 and from those sections of the British press which championed their cause.

  The most strident clamour came from the least attractive section of the white community in India, the non-official Europeans. In 1883 this class totalled 29,000, and it contained professional men, entrepreneurs, railway employees and indigo and tea planters and their wives and children. Their numbers had grown during the past twenty years as a consequence of increased investment in plantations and transport. They possessed a strong sense of solidarity and were very prickly about their standing in a hierarchy which was dominated, socially if not numerically, by government servants and army officers. Whatever their place in the white man’s pecking order, the non-official Indians had no doubts about their superiority over the natives.

  In terms of racial arrogance, the tea and indigo planters had a shameful reputation; like plantation owners and managers in every corner of the world, the Indian planters believed that they had the right to do as they pleased with their labour force and exercised it in defiance of the letter of the law. Consider Gerald Meares, an indigo factory manager from near Jessore, against whom Panchu Hakara, a dak (post) runner, lodged a complaint for assault in April 1874. Meares took revenge by getting his servants to seize Hakara, bind him and deliver him to their master for second thrashing. During the beating Meares told his victim, ‘If I murder a man like you what will happen to me?’ As both men knew, the answer was probably nothing. But Meares was found guilty of assault and imprisoned in spite of false alibi evidence provided by three other Europeans, including his two brothers, both indigo planters.31 The non-official community was vociferous in its support for Meares and indignant at his punishment.32 They believed in a world in which some men were ordained to deliver blows and some to receive them: during his tour of India during 1866 and 1867, the politician Sir Charles Dilke noticed how British station masters kicked and cuffed Indian crowds on railway platforms.33 Men of this stamp cared nothing for law, save when it looked after their interests, and they howled loudest against the Ilbert amendment. If it became law, Indian magistrates might not turn a blind eye to or deal leniently with planters and managers who mistreated their workforce.

  An Anglo-Indian and European Defence Association was formed and held noisy meetings across India. It found powerful and equally strident allies among the London newspapers and journals, with The Times and Daily Telegraph making the running. There were predictions that plantations would collapse in ruin and that every European who ventured into those country areas where Indian magistrates operated would be in danger. Behind the rant were undercurrents of fear that the government was going too far in its efforts to assimilate Indians into the administration. The 62,000-strong Eurasian community feared for its monopoly of railway jobs when a policy of reserving a fixed number of Public Works Department posts for Indians was introduced. Businessmen were angry about recent factory legislation which protected Indian workers. Together, the disgruntled swung almost the entire white community in India against the government.

  By the end of 1883 feelings were running high. Ripon, dismayed by a surge of personal attacks, thought the atmosphere in Calcutta ‘electric’. His councillors were divided and nervous, fearing that European emotions might lead to violence which could not be contained by the largely Indian police force. The government caved in; a compromise was cobbled together by which whites facing trial could opt for a British judge and demand juries with at least six of their countrymen. The Anglo-Indian and European Association was jubilant; the Indians bitterly disappointed.

  There were several lessons from the Ilbert affair. First, the Raj’s boast that all were equal before the law was mere rhetoric and that attempts to enforce it would be strenuously resisted by Europeans. Many high-ranking officials, particularly among the judiciary, were openly hostile to the Ilbert bill. Most important of all, a relatively small body of men and women had deflected the government from its purpose. In doing so they had given Indians a signal demonstration of how to organise politically and enlist outside support for a single end. Such concerted activities had been a feature of British political life for most of the century: there had been the mass movements for the extension of the franchise, the Anti-Corn Law League and, currently, the Irish Home Rule party. Indians realised that they might do likewise, especially as they had been united in favour of the Ilbert amendment, although lacking an organisation to channel their feelings. In May 1883, the Lahore Tribune declared that: ‘The Ilbert bill . . . has brought together the people of India of different races and creeds into one common bond of union . . . the growing feeling of national unity which otherwise would have taken us years to form, suddenly developed into strong sentiments.’34 Inevitably there were demands that like-minded Indians should copy the Europeans and unite under a single umbrella organisation that would represent their national feeling.

  The result was the formation of the Indian National Congress, which held its first annual meeting in Calcutta in December 1885. In essence it represented a fusing of many smaller societies from all parts of India. Its overall objective was to hold Britain to its word, which was that the Raj existed for the benefit of Indians who, under its guidance, would advance to a state in which they could manage their own affairs. No one at the time had the slightest idea of how long this process would take, and some members argued that Congress would overreach itself by aiming at home rule. They would have been quite satisfied with a greater share in the day-to-day administration of their country. There was agreement on one issue: Congress was the voice of all India. The reason why was explained by one of its leading members, Romesh Chandra Dutt, in 1898:

  The English-educated Indians represented the brains and conscience of the country, and were the legitimate spokesmen of the illiterate masses – the natural custodians of their interests, and those who think must govern them.35

  At heart, Congress was fundamentally loyal. At its annual meetings the Queen Empress was referred to as ‘Mother’ and her name cheered. Such displays were genuine and represented a widespread anglophilia among the organisation’s founding fathers. It was rather touchingly expressed during the 1900 session by Achyut Sitaram Sathe:

  The educated Indian is loyal by instinct and contented through interest. The English flag is his physical shelter, the English philosopher has become his spiritual consolation. The English renaissance has so far permeated the educated Indian that it is no longer possible for him to be otherwise than loyal and affectionate towards the rulers of his choice. He is the vanguard of a new civilisation whose banner is love, charity and equality.36

  But what about India’s old civilisation and religions, whose tenets still held sway over the minds of nearly every other Indian? Here the early nationalists were tormented by the same problem which confronted the Raj. How could modernity in all its forms be reconciled to deep-rooted customs and creeds, many of which, in the light of Western reason, appeared to be brakes on progress? The past need not be a shackle; it could, if properly interpreted, serve as a springboard for the new India. Romesh Chandra Dutt believed that, by discovering their roots, Indians would develop a sense of national pride which would encourage them to achieve greatness again. National pride was essential if Indians were to create national unity. It was a theme which permeated Dutt’s histories and historical novels, written in between his duties as an administrator and judge. His history textbook for Bengali schoolchildren, published in 1892, exalted a heroic past and his investigations of ancient Hinduism led him to conclude that roughly between 1000 and 320 BC India had passed through a golden age when art, literature and philosophy had flourished.

  Re-evaluating history fostered self-confidence and a novel sense of national identity. It also posed a dilemma for educated Indians. How long could tradition and progress exist before there was a collision
? Social reform was necessary, but the price might be excessively high if it led to the uprooting of beliefs and customs which the mass of Indians cherished and, as the British experience proved, would defend. Whatever shape it might take, a programme of enlightened social reform was bound to encounter enormous difficulties, for it could never avoid intrusion into such sensitive areas as caste and the position of women. These were hornets’ nests best left undisturbed, for, if agitated, they might reveal the gulf which separated the educated Indian from the masses for whom he claimed to speak. Dabhadi Naoroji, a Parsi businessman and powerful force within Congress, recognised the danger and warned the inaugural session to avoid social reform and stick to purely political objectives.

  It was impossible to ignore social issues completely. After a death from haemorrhage of a very young Hindu bride after sex with her husband, the government introduced a law to raise the age of consent from ten to twelve in 1890. The measure provoked a passionate debate among the Indian intelligentsia which spilled over into Congress’s annual meeting at Nagpur. A minority favoured the change, but the majority objected on the grounds that it was an intrusion into family life and interference with religion. The police would receive the right to force their way into bedrooms and a troop of obscurantist Hindu clerics claimed that ancient scriptures endorsed the violation of pre-pubescent girls. Muslim clergymen concurred, stating that Muhammad had lain with Ayesha when she was nine.37

  In the end, Congress came down on the side of custom rather than humanity. Its attitude gave ammunition to its enemies, who invoked James Mill’s observation: ‘Among a rude people, the women are generally degraded; among a civilized people they are exalted.’ According to Kipling, divergent views on the treatment of women would always ensure ‘an immeasurable gulf’ between his countrymen and Indians.38 One Indian editor responded by printing reports of sexual misbehaviour in Europe, forgetting that such behaviour was not universally condoned or defended by the religious authorities.39 Interestingly, the Age of Consent Act proved to be a piece of token liberalism, for there were no prosecutions for the next thirty years.40