"It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the British Empire did, in India for example".
He added that "it is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together – Iraq, for example".
Indo-UK: News & Discussion
Church of England head lauds British Raj
The Nationalist Movement in India
by Jabez T. Sunderland
The Atlantic Monthly
October 1908
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm
THE Nationalist Movement in India may well interest Americans.
Lovers of progress and humanity cannot become acquainted with it
without discovering that it has large significance, not only to
India and Great Britain, but to the world. That the movement is
attracting much attention in England (as well as awakening some
anxiety there, because of England's connection with India) is well
known to all who read the British periodical press, or follow the
debates of Parliament, or note the public utterances from time to
time of Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley), the British Secretary of
State for India.
What is this new Indian movement? What has brought it into
existence? What is its justification, if it has a justification?
What does it portend as to the future of India, and the future
relations between India and Great Britain?
In order to find answers to these questions we must first of all
get clearly in mind the fact that India is a subject land. She is a
dependency of Great Britain, not a colony. Britain has both
colonies and dependencies. Many persons suppose them to be
identical; but they are not. Britain's free colonies, like Canada
and Australia, though nominally governed by the mother country, are
really self-ruling in everything except their relations to foreign
powers. Not so with dependencies like India. These are granted no
self-government, no representation; they are ruled absolutely by
Great Britain, which is not their "mother" country, but their
conqueror and master.
As the result of a pretty wide acquaintance in England, and a
residence of some years in Canada, I am disposed to believe that
nowhere in the world can be found governments that are more free,
that better embody the intelligent will of their people, or that
better serve their people's many-sided interests and wants, than
those of the self-ruling colonies of Great Britain. I do not see
but that these colonies are in every essential way as free as if
they were full republics. Probably they are not any more free than
the people of the United States, but it is no exaggeration to say
that they are as free. Their connection with England, their mother
country, is not one of coercion; it is one of choice; it is one of
reverence and affection. That the British Government insures such
liberty in its colonies, is a matter for congratulation and
honorable pride. In this respect it stands on a moral elevation
certainly equal to that of any government in the world.
Turn now from Britain's colonies to her dependencies. Here we find
something for which there does not seem to be a natural place among
British political institutions. Britons call their flag the flag of
freedom. They speak of the British Constitution, largely unwritten
though it is, as a constitution which guarantees freedom to every
British subject in the world. Magna Charta meant self-government
for the English people. Cromwell wrote on the statute books of the
English Parliament, "All just powers under God are derived from the
consent of the people." Since Cromwell's day this principle has
been fundamental, central, undisputed, in British home politics. It
took a little longer to get it recognized in colonial matters. The
American Colonies in 1776 took their stand upon it. "Just
government must be based on the consent of the governed." "There
should be no taxation without representation." These were their
affirmations. Burke and Pitt and Fox and the broaderminded leaders
of public opinion in England were in sympathy with their American
brethren. If Britain had been true to her principle of freedom and
self-rule she would have kept her American colonies. But she was
not true to it, and so she lost them. Later she came very near
losing Canada in the same way. But her eyes were opened in time,
and she gave Canada freedom and self-government. This prevented
revolt, and fastened Canada to her with hooks of steel. Since this
experience with Canada it has been a settled principle in
connection with British colonial as well as home politics, that
there is no just power except that which is based upon the consent
of the governed.
But what are we to do with this principle when we come to
dependencies? Is another and different principle to be adopted
here? Are there peoples whom it is just to rule without their
consent? Is justice one thing in England and Canada,and another in
India? It was the belief that what is justice in England and Canada
is justice everywhere that made Froude declare, "Free nations
cannot govern subject provinces."
Why is England in India at all? Why did she go there at first, and
why does she remain? If India had been a comparatively empty land,
as America was when it was discovered, so that Englishmen had
wanted to settle there and make homes, the reason would have been
plain. But it was a full land; and, as a fact, no British emigrants
have ever gone to India to settle and make homes. If the Indian
people had been savages or barbarians, there might have seemed more
reason for England's conquering and ruling them. But they were
peoples with highly organized governments far older than that of
Great Britain, and with a civilization that had risen to a splendid
height before England's was born. Said Lord Curzon, the late
Viceroy of India, in an address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar
in 1901: "Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India]
while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and
while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India
has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the
religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the
universe." It is such a land that England has conquered and is
holding as a dependency. It is such a people that she is ruling
without giving them any voice whatever in the shaping of their own
destiny. The honored Canadian Premier, Sir Wilfred Laurier, at the
Colonial Conference held in London in connection with the
coronation of King Edward, declared, "The Empire of Rome was
composed of slave states; the British Empire is a galaxy of free
nations." But is India a free nation? At that London Colonial
Conference which was called together for consultation about the
interests of the entire Empire, was any representative invited to
be present from India ? Not one. Yet Lord Curzon declared in his
Durbar address in Delhi, that the "principal condition of the
strength of the British throne is the possession of the Indian
Empire, and the faithful attachment and service of the Indian
people." British statesmen never tire of boasting of "our Indian
Empire," and of speaking of India as "the brightest jewel in the
British crown." Do they reflect that it is virtually a slave empire
of which they are so proud; and that this so-called brightest jewel
reflects no light of political freedom?
Perhaps there is nothing so dangerous, or so evil in its effects,
as irresponsible power. That is what Great Britain exercises in
connection with India -- absolute power, with no one to call her to
account. I do not think any nation is able to endure such an ordeal
better than Britain, but it is an ordeal to which neither rulers of
nations nor private men should ever be subjected; the risks are too
great. England avoids it in connection with her own rulers by
making them strictly responsible to the English people. Canada
avoids it in connection with hers by making them responsible to the
Canadian people. Every free nation safeguards alike its people and
its rulers by making its rulers in everything answerable to those
whom they govern. Here is the anomaly of the British rule of India.
Britain through her Indian government rules India, but she does not
acknowledge responsibility in any degree whatever to the Indian
people.
What is the result? Are the interests and the rights of India
protected? Is it possible for the rights of any people to be
protected without self-rule? I invite my readers to go with me to
India and see. What we find will go far toward furnishing us a key
to the meaning of the present Indian Nationalist Movement.
Crossing over from this side to London, we sail from there to India
in a magnificent steamer. On board is a most interesting company of
people, made up of merchants, travelers, and especially Englishmen
who are either officials connected with the Indian Government or
officers in the Indian army, who have been home on furlough with
their families and are now returning. We land in Bombay, a city
that reminds us of Paris or London or New York or Washington. Our
hotel is conducted in English style. We go to the railway station,
one of the most magnificent buildings of the kind in the world, to
take the train for Calcutta, the capital, some fifteen hundred
miles away. Arrived at Calcutta we hear it called the City of
Palaces; nor do we wonder at the name. Who owns the steamship line
by which we came to India? The British. Who built that splendid
railway station in Bombay? The British. Who built the railway on
which we rode to Calcutta? The British.
To whom do these palatial buildings belong? Mostly to the British.
We find that Calcutta and Bombay have a large commerce. To whom
does it belong? Mainly to the British. We find that the Indian
Government, that is, British rule in India, has directly or
indirectly built in the land some 29,000 miles of railway; has
created good postal and telegraph systems, reaching nearly
everywhere; has established or assisted in establishing many
schools, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions of public
benefit; has promoted sanitation, founded law courts after the
English pattern, and done much else to bring India into line with
the civilization of Europe. It is not strange if we soon begin to
exclaim, "How much are the British doing for India! How great a
benefit to the Indian people is British rule!" And in an important
degree we are right in what we say. British rule has done much for
India, and much for which India itself is profoundly grateful.
But have we seen all? Is there no other side? Have we discovered
the deepest and most important that exists? If there are signs of
prosperity, is it the prosperity of the Indian people, or only of
their English masters? If the English are living in ease and
luxury, how are the people of the land living? If there are
railways and splendid buildings, who pay for them? and who get
profits out of them? Have we been away from the beaten tracks of
travel ? Have we been out among the Indian people themselves, in
country as well as in city? Nearly nine-tenths of the people are
ryots, or small farmers, who derive their sustenance directly from
the land. Have we found out how they live? Do we know whether they
are growing better off, or poorer? Especially have we looked into
the causes of those famines, the most terrible known to the modern
world, which have swept like a besom of death over the land year
after year, and which drag after them another scourge scarcely less
dreadful, the plague, their black shadow, their hideous child? Here
is a side of India which we must acquaint ourselves with, as well
as the other, if we would understand the real Indian situation.
The great, disturbing, portentous, all-overshadowing fact connected
with the history of India in recent years is the succession of
famines. What do these famines mean ? Here is a picture from a
recent book, written by a distinguished British civilian who has
had long service in India and knows the Indian situation from the
inside. Since he is an Englishman we may safely count upon his
prejudices, if he has any, being not upon the side of the Indian
people, but upon that of his own countrymen. Mr. W. S. Lilly, in
his India and Its Problems,writes as follows: --
"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century,
18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the
year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress --
5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In
the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, --
a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population
perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget my own
famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after
morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human
corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured
by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, 'the joy
of the world,' as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable
sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them,
wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children,
their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly
wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin
remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of
loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had
been conceived and born and nurtured -- they haunt me still." Every
one who has gone much about India in famine times knows how true to
life is this picture.
Mr. Lilly estimates the number of deaths in the first eight decades
of the last century at 18,000,000. This is nothing less than
appalling, -- within a little more than two generations as many
persons perishing by starvation in a single country as the whole
population of Canada, New England, and the city and state of New
York, or nearly half as many as the total population of France! But
the most startling aspect of the case appears in the fact that the
famines increased in number and severity as the century went on.
Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of
twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five
famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the
second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an
estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were
six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the
last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an
estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to
26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over
6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles.
What is the cause of these famines, and this appalling increase in
their number and destructiveness? The common answer is, the failure
of the rains. But there seems to be no evidence that the rains fail
worse now than they did a hundred years ago. Moreover, why should
failure of rains bring famine? The rains have never failed over
areas so extensive as to prevent the raising of enough food in the
land to supply the needs of the entire population. Why then have
people starved? Not because there was lack of food. Not because
there was lack of food in the famine areas, brought by railways or
otherwise within easy reach of all. There has always been plenty of
food, even in the worst famine years, for those who have had money
to buy it with, and generally food at moderate prices. Why, then,
have all these millions of people perished? Because they were so
indescribably poor. All candid and thorough investigation into the
causes of the famines of India has shown that the chief and
fundamental cause has been and is the poverty of the people, -- a
poverty so severe and terrible that it keeps the majority of the
entire population on the very verge of starvation even in years of
greatest plenty, prevents them from laying up anything against
times of extremity, and hence leaves them, when their crops fail,
absolutely undone -- with nothing between them and death, unless
some form of charity comes to their aid. Says Sir Charles Elliott
long the Chief Commissioner of Assam, "Half the agricultural
population do not know from one halfyear's end to another what it
is to have a full meal." Says the Honorable G. K. Gokhale, of the
Viceroy's Council,"From 60,000,000 to 70,000,000 of the people of
India do not know what it is to have their hunger satisfied even
once in a year."
And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William
Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book
entitled "Prosperous" India,shows from official estimates and
Parliamentary and Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average
daily income of the people of India in the year 1850 was estimated
as four cents per person (a pittance on which one wonders that any
human being can live), in 1882 it had fallen to three cents per
person, and in 1900 actually to less than two cents per person. Is
it any wonder that people reduced to such extremities as this can
lay up nothing? Is it any wonder that when the rains do not come,
and the crops of a single season fail, they are lost? And where is
this to end? If the impoverishment of the people is to go on, what
is there before them but growing hardship, multiplying famines, and
increasing loss of life?
Here we get a glimpse of the real India. It is not the India which
the traveler sees, following the usual routes of travel, stopping
at the leading hotels conducted after the manner of London or
Paris, and mingling with the English lords of the country. It is
not the India which the British "point to with pride," and tell us
about in their books of description and their official reports.
This is India from the inside, the India of the people, of the men,
women, and children, who were born there and die there, who bear
the burdens and pay the taxes, and support the costly government
carried on by foreigners, and do the starving when the famines
come.
What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian
people? Said John Bright, "If a country be found possessing a most
fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production,
and, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme
destitution and suffering, the chances are there is some
fundamental error in the government of that country."
One cause of India's impoverishment is heavy taxation. Taxation in
England and Scotland is high, so high that Englishmen and Scotchmen
complain bitterly. But the people of India are taxed more than
twice as heavily as the people of England and three times as
heavily as those of Scotland. According to the latest statistics at
hand, those of 1905, the annual average income per person in India
is about $6.00, and the annual tax per person about $2.00. Think of
taxing the American people to the extent of one-third their total
income! Yet such taxation here, unbearable as it would be, would
not create a tithe of the suffering that it does in India, because
incomes here are so immensely larger than there. Here it would
cause great hardship, there it creates starvation.
Notice the single item of salt-taxation. Salt is an absolute
necessity to the people, to the very poorest; they must have it or
die. But the tax upon it which for many years they have been
compelled to pay has been much greater than the cost value of the
salt. Under this taxation the quantity of salt consumed has been
reduced actually to one-half the quantity declared by medical
authorities to be absolutely necessary for health. The mere
suggestion in England of a tax on wheat sufficient to raise the
price of bread by even a half-penny on the loaf, creates such a
protest as to threaten the overthrow of ministries. Lately the
salt-tax in India has been reduced, but it still remains well-nigh
prohibitive to the poorer classes. With such facts as these before
us, we do not wonder at Herbert Spencer's indignant protest against
the "grievous salt-monopoly" of the Indian Government, and "the
pitiless taxation which wrings from poor ryob nearly half the
products of the soil."
Another cause of India's impoverishment is the destruction of her
manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first
appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of
the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the
British to her shores. The source of her wealth was largely her
splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls,
muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind,
jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over
Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of
Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part
they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India
in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly
depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them
have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the
already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the
explanation? Great Britain wanted India's markets. She could not
find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was
supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be
sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she
proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the
manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods.
India would have protected herself if she had been able, by
enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no
power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror.
A third cause of India's impoverishment is the enormous and wholly
unnecessary cost of her government. Writers in discussing the
financial situation in India have often pointed out the fact that
her government is the most expensive in the world. Of course the
reason why is plain: it is because it is a government carried on
not by the people of the soil, but by men from a distant country.
These foreigners, having all power in their own hands, including
power to create such offices as they choose and to attach to them
such salaries and pensions as they see fit, naturally do not err on
the side of making the offices too few or the salaries and pensions
too small. Nearly all the higher officials throughout India are
British. To be sure, the Civil Service is nominally open to
Indians. But it is hedged about with so many restrictions (among
others, Indian young men being required to make the journey of
seven thousand miles from India to London to take their
examinations) that they are able for the most part to secure only
the lowest and poorest places. The amount of money which the Indian
people are required to pay as salaries to this great army of
foreign civil servants and appointed higher officials, and then,
later, as pensions for the same, after they have served a given
number of years in India, is very large. That in three-fourths if
not nine-tenths of the positions quite as good service could be
obtained for the government at a fraction of the present cost, by
employing educated and competent Indians, who much better
understand the wants of the country, is quite true. But that would
not serve the purpose of England, who wants these lucrative offices
for her sons. Hence poor Indian ryots must sweat and go hungry, and
if need be starve, that an ever-growing army of foreign officials
may have large salaries and fat pensions. And of course much of the
money paid for these salaries, and practically all paid for the
pensions, goes permanently out of India.
Another burden upon the people of India which they ought not to be
compelled to bear, and which does much to increase their poverty,
is the enormously heavy military expenses of the government. I am
not complaining of the maintenance of such an army as may be
necessary for the defense of the country. But the Indian army is
kept at a strength much beyond what the defense of the country
requires. India is made a sort of general rendezvous and training
camp for the Empire, from which soldiers may at any time be drawn
for service in distant lands. If such an imperial training camp and
rendezvous is needed, a part at least of the heavy expense of it
ought to come out of the Imperial Treasury. But no, India is
helpless, she can be compelled to pay it, she is compelled to pay
it. Many English statesmen recognize this as wrong, and condemn it;
yet it goes right on. Said the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
"Justice demands that England should pay a portion of the cost of
the great Indian army maintained in India for Imperial rather than
Indian purposes. This has not yet been done, and famine-stricken
India is being bled for the maintenance of England's worldwide
empire." But there is still worse than this. Numerous wars and
campaigns are carried on outside of India, the expenses of which,
wholly or in part, India is compelled to bear. For such foreign
wars and campaigns -- campaigns and wars in which the Indian pcople
had no concern, and for which they received no benefit, the aim of
which was solely conquest and the extension of British power --
India was required to pay during the last century the enormous
total of more than $460,000,000. How many such burdens as these can
the millions of India, who live on the average income of $6 a year,
bear without being crushed?
Perhaps the greatest of all the causes of the impoverishment of the
Indian people is the steady and enormous drain of wealth from India
to England, which has been going on ever since the East India
Company first set foot in the land, three hundred years ago, and is
going on still with steadily increasing volume. England claims that
India pays her no "tribute." Technically, this is true; but,
really, it is very far from true. In the form of salaries spent in
England, pensions sent to England, interest drawn in England on
investments made in India, business profits made in India and sent
to England, and various kinds of exploitation carried on in India
for England's benefit, a vast stream of wealth ("tribute" in
effect) is constantly pouring into England from India. Says Mr. R.
C. Dutt, author of the Economic History of India(and there is no
higher authority), "A sum reckoned at twenty millions of English
money, or a hundred millions of American money [some other
authorities put it much higher], which it should be borne in mind
is equal to half the net revenues of India, is remitted annually
from this country [India] to England, without a direct equivalent.
Think of it! One-half of what we [in India] pay as taxes goes out
of the country, and does not come back to the people. No other
country on earth suffers like this at the present day; and no
country on earth could bear such an annual drain without increasing
impoverishment and repeated famines. We denounce ancient Rome for
impoverishing Gaul and Egypt, Sicily and Palestine, to enrich
herself. We denounce Spain for robbing the New World and the
Netherlands to amass wealth. England is following exactly the same
practice in India. Is it strange that she is converting India into
a land of poverty and famine?"
But it is only a part of the wrong done to India that she is
impoverished. Quite as great an injustice is her loss of liberty,
-- the fact that she is allowed no part in shaping her own
political destiny. As we have seen, Canada and Australia are free
and self-governing. India is kept in absolute subjection. Yet her
people are largely of Aryan blood, the finest race in Asia. There
are not wanting men among them, men in numbers, who are the equals
of their British masters, in knowledge, in ability, in
trustworthiness, in every high quality. It is not strange that many
Englishmen are waking up to the fact that such treatment of such a
people, of any people, is tyranny: it is a violation of those
ideals of freedom and justice which have been England's greatest
glory. It is also short-sighted as regards Britain's own interests.
It is the kind of policy which cost her her American Colonies, and
later came near costing her Canada. If persisted in, it may cost
her India.
What is the remedy for the evils and burdens under which the Indian
people are suffering? How may the people be relieved from their
abject and growing poverty? How can they be given prosperity,
happiness, and content?
Many answers are suggested. One is, make the taxes lighter. This is
doubtless important. But how can it be effected so long as the
people have no voice in their own government? Another is, enact
such legislation and set on foot such measures as may be found
necessary to restore as far as possible the native industries which
have been destroyed. This is good; but will an alien government,
and one which has itself destroyed these industries for its own
advantage, ever do this? Another is, reduce the unnecessary and
illegitimate military expenses. This is easy to say, and it is most
reasonable. But how can it be brought about, so long as the
government favors such expenses, and the people have no power?
Another thing urged is, stop the drain of wealth to England. But
what steps can be taken looking in this direction so long ns India
has no power to protect herself? It all comes back to this: the
fundamental difficulty, the fundamental evil, the fundamental
wrong, lies in the fact that the Indian people are permitted to
have no voice in their own government. Thus they are unable to
guard their own interests, unable to protect themselves against
unjust laws, unable to inaugurate those measures for their own
advancement which must always come from those immediately
concerned.
It is hard to conceive of a government farther removed from the
people in spirit or sympathy than is that of India. There has been
a marked change for the worse in this respect within the past
twenty-five years, since the vice-regal term of Lord Ripon. The
whole spirit of the government has become reactionary, increasingly
so, reaching its culmination in the recent administration of Lord
Curzon. The present Indian Secretary, Lord Morley, has promised
improvement; but, so far, the promise has had no realization.
Instead of improvement, the situation has been made in important
respects worse. There have been tyrannies within the past two
years, within the past three months, which even Lord Curzon would
have shrunk from. There is no space here to enumerate them.
Fifty years ago the people were consulted and conciliated in ways
that would not now be thought of. Then the government did not
hesitate to hold before the people the ideal of increasing
political privileges, responsibilities, and advantages. It was
freely given out that the purpose of the government was to prepare
the people for self-rule. Now no promise or intimation of anything
of the kind is ever heard from any one in authority. Everywhere in
India one finds Englishmen -- officials and others -- with few
exceptions -- regarding this kind of talk as little better than
treason. The Civil Service of India is reasonably efficient, and to
a gratifying degree free from peculation and corruption. But the
government is as complete a bureaucracy as that of Russia. Indeed
it is no exaggeration to say that, as a bureaucracy, it is as
autocratic, as arbitrary in its methods, as reactionary in its
spirit, as far removed from sympathy with the people, as determined
to keep all power in its own hands, as unwilling to consult the
popular wishes, or to listen to the voice of the most enlightened
portion of the nation, even when expressed through the great and
widely representative Indian National Congress, as is the Russian
bureaucracy. Proof of this can be furnished to any amount.
It is said that India is incapable of ruling herself. If so, what
an indictment is this against England! She was not incapable of
ruling herself before England came. Have one hundred and fifty
years of English tutelage produced in her such deterioration? As we
have seen, she was possessed of a high civilization and of
developed governments long before England or any part of Europe had
emerged from barbarism. For three thousand years before England's
arrival, Indian kingdoms and empires had held leading places in
Asia. Some of the ablest rulers, statesmen, and financiers of the
world have been of India's production. How is it, then, that she
loses her ability to govern herself as soon as England appears upon
the scene? To be sure, at that time she was in a peculiarly
disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered that
the Mogul Empire was just breaking up, and new political
adjustments were everywhere just being made, -- a fact which
accounts for England's being able to gain a political foothold in
India. But everything indicates that if India had not been
interfered with by European powers, she would soon have been under
competent governments of her own again.
A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself
-- and surely one that should be conclusive -- is the fact that, in
parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It
is notorious that the very best government in India to-day is not
that carried on by the British, but that of several of the native
states, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these states, particularly
Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented,
and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note
the superiority of both these states in the important matter of
popular education. Mysore is spending on education more than three
times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made
her education free and compulsory. Both of these states, but
especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line with the
leading nations of Europe and America by making provision for the
education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British
India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only
one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.
The truth is, not one single fact can be cited that goes to show
that India cannot govern herself, -- reasonably well at first,
excellently well later, -- if only given a chance. It would not be
difficult to form an Indian Parliament to-day, composed of men as
able and of as high character as those that constitute the fine
Parliament of Japan, or as those that will be certain to constitute
the not less able national Parliament of China when the new
constitutional government of that nation comes into operation. This
is only another way of saying that among the leaders in the various
states and provinces of India there is abundance of material to
form an Indian National Parliament not inferior in intellectual
ability or in moral worth to the parliaments of the Western world.
We have now before us the data for understanding, at least in a
measure, the meaning of the "New National Movement in India." It is
the awakening and the protest of a subject people. It is the effort
of a nation, once illustrious, and still conscious of its inherent
superiority, to rise from the dust, to stand once more on its feet,
to shake off fetters which have become unendurable. It is the
effort of the Indian people to get for themselves again a country
which shall be in some true sense their own, instead of remaining,
as for a century and a half it has been, a mere preserve of a
foreign power, -- in John Stuart Mill's words, England's "cattle
farm." The people of India want the freedom which is their right,
-- freedom to shape their own institutions, their own industries,
their own national life. This does not necessarily mean separation
from Great Britain; but it does mean, if retaining a connection
with the British Empire, becoming citizens,and not remaining
forever helpless subjectsin the hands of irresponsible masters. It
does mean a demand that India shall be given a place in the Empire
essentially like that of Canada or Australia,with such autonomy and
home rule as are enjoyed by these free, self-governing colonies. Is
not this demand just? Not only the people of India, but many of the
best Englishmen, answer unequivocally, Yes! In the arduous struggle
upon which India has entered to attain this end (arduous indeed her
struggle must be, for holders of autocratic and irresponsible power
seldom in this world surrender their power without being compelled)
surely she should have the sympathy of the enlightened and
liberty-loving men and women of all nations.
The Atlantic Monthly; October, 1908; The New Nationalist Movement
in India; Volume 102, No. 4; pages 526-535
by Jabez T. Sunderland
The Atlantic Monthly
October 1908
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm
THE Nationalist Movement in India may well interest Americans.
Lovers of progress and humanity cannot become acquainted with it
without discovering that it has large significance, not only to
India and Great Britain, but to the world. That the movement is
attracting much attention in England (as well as awakening some
anxiety there, because of England's connection with India) is well
known to all who read the British periodical press, or follow the
debates of Parliament, or note the public utterances from time to
time of Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley), the British Secretary of
State for India.
What is this new Indian movement? What has brought it into
existence? What is its justification, if it has a justification?
What does it portend as to the future of India, and the future
relations between India and Great Britain?
In order to find answers to these questions we must first of all
get clearly in mind the fact that India is a subject land. She is a
dependency of Great Britain, not a colony. Britain has both
colonies and dependencies. Many persons suppose them to be
identical; but they are not. Britain's free colonies, like Canada
and Australia, though nominally governed by the mother country, are
really self-ruling in everything except their relations to foreign
powers. Not so with dependencies like India. These are granted no
self-government, no representation; they are ruled absolutely by
Great Britain, which is not their "mother" country, but their
conqueror and master.
As the result of a pretty wide acquaintance in England, and a
residence of some years in Canada, I am disposed to believe that
nowhere in the world can be found governments that are more free,
that better embody the intelligent will of their people, or that
better serve their people's many-sided interests and wants, than
those of the self-ruling colonies of Great Britain. I do not see
but that these colonies are in every essential way as free as if
they were full republics. Probably they are not any more free than
the people of the United States, but it is no exaggeration to say
that they are as free. Their connection with England, their mother
country, is not one of coercion; it is one of choice; it is one of
reverence and affection. That the British Government insures such
liberty in its colonies, is a matter for congratulation and
honorable pride. In this respect it stands on a moral elevation
certainly equal to that of any government in the world.
Turn now from Britain's colonies to her dependencies. Here we find
something for which there does not seem to be a natural place among
British political institutions. Britons call their flag the flag of
freedom. They speak of the British Constitution, largely unwritten
though it is, as a constitution which guarantees freedom to every
British subject in the world. Magna Charta meant self-government
for the English people. Cromwell wrote on the statute books of the
English Parliament, "All just powers under God are derived from the
consent of the people." Since Cromwell's day this principle has
been fundamental, central, undisputed, in British home politics. It
took a little longer to get it recognized in colonial matters. The
American Colonies in 1776 took their stand upon it. "Just
government must be based on the consent of the governed." "There
should be no taxation without representation." These were their
affirmations. Burke and Pitt and Fox and the broaderminded leaders
of public opinion in England were in sympathy with their American
brethren. If Britain had been true to her principle of freedom and
self-rule she would have kept her American colonies. But she was
not true to it, and so she lost them. Later she came very near
losing Canada in the same way. But her eyes were opened in time,
and she gave Canada freedom and self-government. This prevented
revolt, and fastened Canada to her with hooks of steel. Since this
experience with Canada it has been a settled principle in
connection with British colonial as well as home politics, that
there is no just power except that which is based upon the consent
of the governed.
But what are we to do with this principle when we come to
dependencies? Is another and different principle to be adopted
here? Are there peoples whom it is just to rule without their
consent? Is justice one thing in England and Canada,and another in
India? It was the belief that what is justice in England and Canada
is justice everywhere that made Froude declare, "Free nations
cannot govern subject provinces."
Why is England in India at all? Why did she go there at first, and
why does she remain? If India had been a comparatively empty land,
as America was when it was discovered, so that Englishmen had
wanted to settle there and make homes, the reason would have been
plain. But it was a full land; and, as a fact, no British emigrants
have ever gone to India to settle and make homes. If the Indian
people had been savages or barbarians, there might have seemed more
reason for England's conquering and ruling them. But they were
peoples with highly organized governments far older than that of
Great Britain, and with a civilization that had risen to a splendid
height before England's was born. Said Lord Curzon, the late
Viceroy of India, in an address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar
in 1901: "Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India]
while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and
while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India
has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the
religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the
universe." It is such a land that England has conquered and is
holding as a dependency. It is such a people that she is ruling
without giving them any voice whatever in the shaping of their own
destiny. The honored Canadian Premier, Sir Wilfred Laurier, at the
Colonial Conference held in London in connection with the
coronation of King Edward, declared, "The Empire of Rome was
composed of slave states; the British Empire is a galaxy of free
nations." But is India a free nation? At that London Colonial
Conference which was called together for consultation about the
interests of the entire Empire, was any representative invited to
be present from India ? Not one. Yet Lord Curzon declared in his
Durbar address in Delhi, that the "principal condition of the
strength of the British throne is the possession of the Indian
Empire, and the faithful attachment and service of the Indian
people." British statesmen never tire of boasting of "our Indian
Empire," and of speaking of India as "the brightest jewel in the
British crown." Do they reflect that it is virtually a slave empire
of which they are so proud; and that this so-called brightest jewel
reflects no light of political freedom?
Perhaps there is nothing so dangerous, or so evil in its effects,
as irresponsible power. That is what Great Britain exercises in
connection with India -- absolute power, with no one to call her to
account. I do not think any nation is able to endure such an ordeal
better than Britain, but it is an ordeal to which neither rulers of
nations nor private men should ever be subjected; the risks are too
great. England avoids it in connection with her own rulers by
making them strictly responsible to the English people. Canada
avoids it in connection with hers by making them responsible to the
Canadian people. Every free nation safeguards alike its people and
its rulers by making its rulers in everything answerable to those
whom they govern. Here is the anomaly of the British rule of India.
Britain through her Indian government rules India, but she does not
acknowledge responsibility in any degree whatever to the Indian
people.
What is the result? Are the interests and the rights of India
protected? Is it possible for the rights of any people to be
protected without self-rule? I invite my readers to go with me to
India and see. What we find will go far toward furnishing us a key
to the meaning of the present Indian Nationalist Movement.
Crossing over from this side to London, we sail from there to India
in a magnificent steamer. On board is a most interesting company of
people, made up of merchants, travelers, and especially Englishmen
who are either officials connected with the Indian Government or
officers in the Indian army, who have been home on furlough with
their families and are now returning. We land in Bombay, a city
that reminds us of Paris or London or New York or Washington. Our
hotel is conducted in English style. We go to the railway station,
one of the most magnificent buildings of the kind in the world, to
take the train for Calcutta, the capital, some fifteen hundred
miles away. Arrived at Calcutta we hear it called the City of
Palaces; nor do we wonder at the name. Who owns the steamship line
by which we came to India? The British. Who built that splendid
railway station in Bombay? The British. Who built the railway on
which we rode to Calcutta? The British.
To whom do these palatial buildings belong? Mostly to the British.
We find that Calcutta and Bombay have a large commerce. To whom
does it belong? Mainly to the British. We find that the Indian
Government, that is, British rule in India, has directly or
indirectly built in the land some 29,000 miles of railway; has
created good postal and telegraph systems, reaching nearly
everywhere; has established or assisted in establishing many
schools, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions of public
benefit; has promoted sanitation, founded law courts after the
English pattern, and done much else to bring India into line with
the civilization of Europe. It is not strange if we soon begin to
exclaim, "How much are the British doing for India! How great a
benefit to the Indian people is British rule!" And in an important
degree we are right in what we say. British rule has done much for
India, and much for which India itself is profoundly grateful.
But have we seen all? Is there no other side? Have we discovered
the deepest and most important that exists? If there are signs of
prosperity, is it the prosperity of the Indian people, or only of
their English masters? If the English are living in ease and
luxury, how are the people of the land living? If there are
railways and splendid buildings, who pay for them? and who get
profits out of them? Have we been away from the beaten tracks of
travel ? Have we been out among the Indian people themselves, in
country as well as in city? Nearly nine-tenths of the people are
ryots, or small farmers, who derive their sustenance directly from
the land. Have we found out how they live? Do we know whether they
are growing better off, or poorer? Especially have we looked into
the causes of those famines, the most terrible known to the modern
world, which have swept like a besom of death over the land year
after year, and which drag after them another scourge scarcely less
dreadful, the plague, their black shadow, their hideous child? Here
is a side of India which we must acquaint ourselves with, as well
as the other, if we would understand the real Indian situation.
The great, disturbing, portentous, all-overshadowing fact connected
with the history of India in recent years is the succession of
famines. What do these famines mean ? Here is a picture from a
recent book, written by a distinguished British civilian who has
had long service in India and knows the Indian situation from the
inside. Since he is an Englishman we may safely count upon his
prejudices, if he has any, being not upon the side of the Indian
people, but upon that of his own countrymen. Mr. W. S. Lilly, in
his India and Its Problems,writes as follows: --
"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century,
18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the
year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress --
5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In
the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, --
a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population
perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget my own
famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after
morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human
corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured
by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, 'the joy
of the world,' as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable
sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them,
wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children,
their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly
wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin
remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of
loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had
been conceived and born and nurtured -- they haunt me still." Every
one who has gone much about India in famine times knows how true to
life is this picture.
Mr. Lilly estimates the number of deaths in the first eight decades
of the last century at 18,000,000. This is nothing less than
appalling, -- within a little more than two generations as many
persons perishing by starvation in a single country as the whole
population of Canada, New England, and the city and state of New
York, or nearly half as many as the total population of France! But
the most startling aspect of the case appears in the fact that the
famines increased in number and severity as the century went on.
Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of
twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five
famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the
second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an
estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were
six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the
last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an
estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to
26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over
6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles.
What is the cause of these famines, and this appalling increase in
their number and destructiveness? The common answer is, the failure
of the rains. But there seems to be no evidence that the rains fail
worse now than they did a hundred years ago. Moreover, why should
failure of rains bring famine? The rains have never failed over
areas so extensive as to prevent the raising of enough food in the
land to supply the needs of the entire population. Why then have
people starved? Not because there was lack of food. Not because
there was lack of food in the famine areas, brought by railways or
otherwise within easy reach of all. There has always been plenty of
food, even in the worst famine years, for those who have had money
to buy it with, and generally food at moderate prices. Why, then,
have all these millions of people perished? Because they were so
indescribably poor. All candid and thorough investigation into the
causes of the famines of India has shown that the chief and
fundamental cause has been and is the poverty of the people, -- a
poverty so severe and terrible that it keeps the majority of the
entire population on the very verge of starvation even in years of
greatest plenty, prevents them from laying up anything against
times of extremity, and hence leaves them, when their crops fail,
absolutely undone -- with nothing between them and death, unless
some form of charity comes to their aid. Says Sir Charles Elliott
long the Chief Commissioner of Assam, "Half the agricultural
population do not know from one halfyear's end to another what it
is to have a full meal." Says the Honorable G. K. Gokhale, of the
Viceroy's Council,"From 60,000,000 to 70,000,000 of the people of
India do not know what it is to have their hunger satisfied even
once in a year."
And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William
Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book
entitled "Prosperous" India,shows from official estimates and
Parliamentary and Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average
daily income of the people of India in the year 1850 was estimated
as four cents per person (a pittance on which one wonders that any
human being can live), in 1882 it had fallen to three cents per
person, and in 1900 actually to less than two cents per person. Is
it any wonder that people reduced to such extremities as this can
lay up nothing? Is it any wonder that when the rains do not come,
and the crops of a single season fail, they are lost? And where is
this to end? If the impoverishment of the people is to go on, what
is there before them but growing hardship, multiplying famines, and
increasing loss of life?
Here we get a glimpse of the real India. It is not the India which
the traveler sees, following the usual routes of travel, stopping
at the leading hotels conducted after the manner of London or
Paris, and mingling with the English lords of the country. It is
not the India which the British "point to with pride," and tell us
about in their books of description and their official reports.
This is India from the inside, the India of the people, of the men,
women, and children, who were born there and die there, who bear
the burdens and pay the taxes, and support the costly government
carried on by foreigners, and do the starving when the famines
come.
What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian
people? Said John Bright, "If a country be found possessing a most
fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production,
and, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme
destitution and suffering, the chances are there is some
fundamental error in the government of that country."
One cause of India's impoverishment is heavy taxation. Taxation in
England and Scotland is high, so high that Englishmen and Scotchmen
complain bitterly. But the people of India are taxed more than
twice as heavily as the people of England and three times as
heavily as those of Scotland. According to the latest statistics at
hand, those of 1905, the annual average income per person in India
is about $6.00, and the annual tax per person about $2.00. Think of
taxing the American people to the extent of one-third their total
income! Yet such taxation here, unbearable as it would be, would
not create a tithe of the suffering that it does in India, because
incomes here are so immensely larger than there. Here it would
cause great hardship, there it creates starvation.
Notice the single item of salt-taxation. Salt is an absolute
necessity to the people, to the very poorest; they must have it or
die. But the tax upon it which for many years they have been
compelled to pay has been much greater than the cost value of the
salt. Under this taxation the quantity of salt consumed has been
reduced actually to one-half the quantity declared by medical
authorities to be absolutely necessary for health. The mere
suggestion in England of a tax on wheat sufficient to raise the
price of bread by even a half-penny on the loaf, creates such a
protest as to threaten the overthrow of ministries. Lately the
salt-tax in India has been reduced, but it still remains well-nigh
prohibitive to the poorer classes. With such facts as these before
us, we do not wonder at Herbert Spencer's indignant protest against
the "grievous salt-monopoly" of the Indian Government, and "the
pitiless taxation which wrings from poor ryob nearly half the
products of the soil."
Another cause of India's impoverishment is the destruction of her
manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first
appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of
the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the
British to her shores. The source of her wealth was largely her
splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls,
muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind,
jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over
Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of
Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part
they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India
in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly
depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them
have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the
already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the
explanation? Great Britain wanted India's markets. She could not
find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was
supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be
sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she
proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the
manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods.
India would have protected herself if she had been able, by
enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no
power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror.
A third cause of India's impoverishment is the enormous and wholly
unnecessary cost of her government. Writers in discussing the
financial situation in India have often pointed out the fact that
her government is the most expensive in the world. Of course the
reason why is plain: it is because it is a government carried on
not by the people of the soil, but by men from a distant country.
These foreigners, having all power in their own hands, including
power to create such offices as they choose and to attach to them
such salaries and pensions as they see fit, naturally do not err on
the side of making the offices too few or the salaries and pensions
too small. Nearly all the higher officials throughout India are
British. To be sure, the Civil Service is nominally open to
Indians. But it is hedged about with so many restrictions (among
others, Indian young men being required to make the journey of
seven thousand miles from India to London to take their
examinations) that they are able for the most part to secure only
the lowest and poorest places. The amount of money which the Indian
people are required to pay as salaries to this great army of
foreign civil servants and appointed higher officials, and then,
later, as pensions for the same, after they have served a given
number of years in India, is very large. That in three-fourths if
not nine-tenths of the positions quite as good service could be
obtained for the government at a fraction of the present cost, by
employing educated and competent Indians, who much better
understand the wants of the country, is quite true. But that would
not serve the purpose of England, who wants these lucrative offices
for her sons. Hence poor Indian ryots must sweat and go hungry, and
if need be starve, that an ever-growing army of foreign officials
may have large salaries and fat pensions. And of course much of the
money paid for these salaries, and practically all paid for the
pensions, goes permanently out of India.
Another burden upon the people of India which they ought not to be
compelled to bear, and which does much to increase their poverty,
is the enormously heavy military expenses of the government. I am
not complaining of the maintenance of such an army as may be
necessary for the defense of the country. But the Indian army is
kept at a strength much beyond what the defense of the country
requires. India is made a sort of general rendezvous and training
camp for the Empire, from which soldiers may at any time be drawn
for service in distant lands. If such an imperial training camp and
rendezvous is needed, a part at least of the heavy expense of it
ought to come out of the Imperial Treasury. But no, India is
helpless, she can be compelled to pay it, she is compelled to pay
it. Many English statesmen recognize this as wrong, and condemn it;
yet it goes right on. Said the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
"Justice demands that England should pay a portion of the cost of
the great Indian army maintained in India for Imperial rather than
Indian purposes. This has not yet been done, and famine-stricken
India is being bled for the maintenance of England's worldwide
empire." But there is still worse than this. Numerous wars and
campaigns are carried on outside of India, the expenses of which,
wholly or in part, India is compelled to bear. For such foreign
wars and campaigns -- campaigns and wars in which the Indian pcople
had no concern, and for which they received no benefit, the aim of
which was solely conquest and the extension of British power --
India was required to pay during the last century the enormous
total of more than $460,000,000. How many such burdens as these can
the millions of India, who live on the average income of $6 a year,
bear without being crushed?
Perhaps the greatest of all the causes of the impoverishment of the
Indian people is the steady and enormous drain of wealth from India
to England, which has been going on ever since the East India
Company first set foot in the land, three hundred years ago, and is
going on still with steadily increasing volume. England claims that
India pays her no "tribute." Technically, this is true; but,
really, it is very far from true. In the form of salaries spent in
England, pensions sent to England, interest drawn in England on
investments made in India, business profits made in India and sent
to England, and various kinds of exploitation carried on in India
for England's benefit, a vast stream of wealth ("tribute" in
effect) is constantly pouring into England from India. Says Mr. R.
C. Dutt, author of the Economic History of India(and there is no
higher authority), "A sum reckoned at twenty millions of English
money, or a hundred millions of American money [some other
authorities put it much higher], which it should be borne in mind
is equal to half the net revenues of India, is remitted annually
from this country [India] to England, without a direct equivalent.
Think of it! One-half of what we [in India] pay as taxes goes out
of the country, and does not come back to the people. No other
country on earth suffers like this at the present day; and no
country on earth could bear such an annual drain without increasing
impoverishment and repeated famines. We denounce ancient Rome for
impoverishing Gaul and Egypt, Sicily and Palestine, to enrich
herself. We denounce Spain for robbing the New World and the
Netherlands to amass wealth. England is following exactly the same
practice in India. Is it strange that she is converting India into
a land of poverty and famine?"
But it is only a part of the wrong done to India that she is
impoverished. Quite as great an injustice is her loss of liberty,
-- the fact that she is allowed no part in shaping her own
political destiny. As we have seen, Canada and Australia are free
and self-governing. India is kept in absolute subjection. Yet her
people are largely of Aryan blood, the finest race in Asia. There
are not wanting men among them, men in numbers, who are the equals
of their British masters, in knowledge, in ability, in
trustworthiness, in every high quality. It is not strange that many
Englishmen are waking up to the fact that such treatment of such a
people, of any people, is tyranny: it is a violation of those
ideals of freedom and justice which have been England's greatest
glory. It is also short-sighted as regards Britain's own interests.
It is the kind of policy which cost her her American Colonies, and
later came near costing her Canada. If persisted in, it may cost
her India.
What is the remedy for the evils and burdens under which the Indian
people are suffering? How may the people be relieved from their
abject and growing poverty? How can they be given prosperity,
happiness, and content?
Many answers are suggested. One is, make the taxes lighter. This is
doubtless important. But how can it be effected so long as the
people have no voice in their own government? Another is, enact
such legislation and set on foot such measures as may be found
necessary to restore as far as possible the native industries which
have been destroyed. This is good; but will an alien government,
and one which has itself destroyed these industries for its own
advantage, ever do this? Another is, reduce the unnecessary and
illegitimate military expenses. This is easy to say, and it is most
reasonable. But how can it be brought about, so long as the
government favors such expenses, and the people have no power?
Another thing urged is, stop the drain of wealth to England. But
what steps can be taken looking in this direction so long ns India
has no power to protect herself? It all comes back to this: the
fundamental difficulty, the fundamental evil, the fundamental
wrong, lies in the fact that the Indian people are permitted to
have no voice in their own government. Thus they are unable to
guard their own interests, unable to protect themselves against
unjust laws, unable to inaugurate those measures for their own
advancement which must always come from those immediately
concerned.
It is hard to conceive of a government farther removed from the
people in spirit or sympathy than is that of India. There has been
a marked change for the worse in this respect within the past
twenty-five years, since the vice-regal term of Lord Ripon. The
whole spirit of the government has become reactionary, increasingly
so, reaching its culmination in the recent administration of Lord
Curzon. The present Indian Secretary, Lord Morley, has promised
improvement; but, so far, the promise has had no realization.
Instead of improvement, the situation has been made in important
respects worse. There have been tyrannies within the past two
years, within the past three months, which even Lord Curzon would
have shrunk from. There is no space here to enumerate them.
Fifty years ago the people were consulted and conciliated in ways
that would not now be thought of. Then the government did not
hesitate to hold before the people the ideal of increasing
political privileges, responsibilities, and advantages. It was
freely given out that the purpose of the government was to prepare
the people for self-rule. Now no promise or intimation of anything
of the kind is ever heard from any one in authority. Everywhere in
India one finds Englishmen -- officials and others -- with few
exceptions -- regarding this kind of talk as little better than
treason. The Civil Service of India is reasonably efficient, and to
a gratifying degree free from peculation and corruption. But the
government is as complete a bureaucracy as that of Russia. Indeed
it is no exaggeration to say that, as a bureaucracy, it is as
autocratic, as arbitrary in its methods, as reactionary in its
spirit, as far removed from sympathy with the people, as determined
to keep all power in its own hands, as unwilling to consult the
popular wishes, or to listen to the voice of the most enlightened
portion of the nation, even when expressed through the great and
widely representative Indian National Congress, as is the Russian
bureaucracy. Proof of this can be furnished to any amount.
It is said that India is incapable of ruling herself. If so, what
an indictment is this against England! She was not incapable of
ruling herself before England came. Have one hundred and fifty
years of English tutelage produced in her such deterioration? As we
have seen, she was possessed of a high civilization and of
developed governments long before England or any part of Europe had
emerged from barbarism. For three thousand years before England's
arrival, Indian kingdoms and empires had held leading places in
Asia. Some of the ablest rulers, statesmen, and financiers of the
world have been of India's production. How is it, then, that she
loses her ability to govern herself as soon as England appears upon
the scene? To be sure, at that time she was in a peculiarly
disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered that
the Mogul Empire was just breaking up, and new political
adjustments were everywhere just being made, -- a fact which
accounts for England's being able to gain a political foothold in
India. But everything indicates that if India had not been
interfered with by European powers, she would soon have been under
competent governments of her own again.
A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself
-- and surely one that should be conclusive -- is the fact that, in
parts, she is governing herself now, and governing herself well. It
is notorious that the very best government in India to-day is not
that carried on by the British, but that of several of the native
states, notably Baroda and Mysore. In these states, particularly
Baroda, the people are more free, more prosperous, more contented,
and are making more progress, than in any other part of India. Note
the superiority of both these states in the important matter of
popular education. Mysore is spending on education more than three
times as much per capita as is British India, while Baroda has made
her education free and compulsory. Both of these states, but
especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line with the
leading nations of Europe and America by making provision for the
education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British
India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only
one boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.
The truth is, not one single fact can be cited that goes to show
that India cannot govern herself, -- reasonably well at first,
excellently well later, -- if only given a chance. It would not be
difficult to form an Indian Parliament to-day, composed of men as
able and of as high character as those that constitute the fine
Parliament of Japan, or as those that will be certain to constitute
the not less able national Parliament of China when the new
constitutional government of that nation comes into operation. This
is only another way of saying that among the leaders in the various
states and provinces of India there is abundance of material to
form an Indian National Parliament not inferior in intellectual
ability or in moral worth to the parliaments of the Western world.
We have now before us the data for understanding, at least in a
measure, the meaning of the "New National Movement in India." It is
the awakening and the protest of a subject people. It is the effort
of a nation, once illustrious, and still conscious of its inherent
superiority, to rise from the dust, to stand once more on its feet,
to shake off fetters which have become unendurable. It is the
effort of the Indian people to get for themselves again a country
which shall be in some true sense their own, instead of remaining,
as for a century and a half it has been, a mere preserve of a
foreign power, -- in John Stuart Mill's words, England's "cattle
farm." The people of India want the freedom which is their right,
-- freedom to shape their own institutions, their own industries,
their own national life. This does not necessarily mean separation
from Great Britain; but it does mean, if retaining a connection
with the British Empire, becoming citizens,and not remaining
forever helpless subjectsin the hands of irresponsible masters. It
does mean a demand that India shall be given a place in the Empire
essentially like that of Canada or Australia,with such autonomy and
home rule as are enjoyed by these free, self-governing colonies. Is
not this demand just? Not only the people of India, but many of the
best Englishmen, answer unequivocally, Yes! In the arduous struggle
upon which India has entered to attain this end (arduous indeed her
struggle must be, for holders of autocratic and irresponsible power
seldom in this world surrender their power without being compelled)
surely she should have the sympathy of the enlightened and
liberty-loving men and women of all nations.
The Atlantic Monthly; October, 1908; The New Nationalist Movement
in India; Volume 102, No. 4; pages 526-535
The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857
BRITISH INDIA.
The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the
government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war
with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations
having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order
that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally. Frederic was
defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian
army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay,
and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and
capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English
commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William
Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India,
the English were engaged in a doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal,
who was supported by the French. Even the navy of England appeared at
that time to have lost its sense of superiority; for not only had Admiral
Byng just been shot for not behaving with proper spirit, but a combined
expedition against the coast of France ended in signal failure, and Admiral
Holburne declined to attack a French fleet off Louisburg. No wonder that
the British people readily believed an author who then published a work to
establish the agreeable proposition, "that they were a race of cowards and
scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of
being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate."
Such a succession of disasters might well discourage a people, some of whom
could recollect the long list of victories which commenced with Blenheim
and closed with Malplaquet, and by which the arrogance of the Grand
Monarque had been punished.
Yet it is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern
England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the
Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,--cold,
comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season
have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the
pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which
succeeded in carrying England's power and glory to heights which they
did not reach even under the Protectorship of Cromwell or the rule of
Godolphin. Then were commenced those measures which ended in the expulsion
of the French from North America, and gave to England a territory here
which may perpetuate her institutions for ages after they shall have ceased
to be known in the mother-land. Then was America conquered in Germany, and
not only was Frederic so assisted as to be able to contend successfully
against the three great houses of Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanoff, and a
horde of lesser dynasties, but British armies, at Minden and Creveldt,
renewed on the fields of the continent recollections of the island skill
and the island courage. Then was a new spirit breathed into the British
marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom
stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which
gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba,
and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that
Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder,
and of not a little envy; for on the 23d of June, 1757, was fought the
battle of Plassey, the first of those many Indian victories that illustrate
the names of Clive, Coote, Wellesley, Gough, Napier, and numerous other
heroes. It seems odd, that the interest in Indian affairs should have been
suddenly and strangely revived in the hundredth year after the victory that
laid Bengal at the feet of an English adventurer. Had the insurgent Sepoys
delayed action but a few weeks, they might have inaugurated their movement
on the very centennial anniversary of the birth of British India.
There is nothing like the rule of the English in India to be found in
history. It has been compared to the dominion which Rome held over so large
a portion of the world; but the comparison has not the merit of aptness.
The population of the Roman Empire, in the age of the Antonines, has been
estimated at 120,000,000, including that of Italy. The population of
India is not less than 150,000,000, without counting any portion of the
conquering race. Rome was favorably situated for the maintenance of her
supremacy, as she had been for the work of conquest. Her dominion lay
around the Mediterranean, which Italy pierced, looking to the East and the
West, and forming, as it were, a great place of arms, whence to subdue or
to overawe the nations. Cicero called the Hellenic states and colonies a
fringe on the skirts of Barbarism, and the description applies also to the
Roman dominion; for though Gaul and Spain were conquered from sea to sea,
and the legions were encamped on the Euphrates, and the valley of the Nile
was as submissive to the Caesars as it had been to the Lagidse, yet the
Mediterranean was the basis of Roman power, and a short journey in almost
any direction from it would have taken the traveller completely from
under the protection of the eagles. Not so is it with British India. From
no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions
are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most
powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause
of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the
sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able
to maintain her naval supremacy. Those who predict her downfall in the
East, either as a consequence of the natives throwing off her rule, or
through a Russian invasion, forget that she entered India from the sea,
and that until she shall have been subdued on that element it would be
idle to think of dispossessing her of her Oriental supremacy. Were the
long-cherished dream of Russia to be realized,--a dream that is said to
have troubled the sleep of Peter, and which certainly haunted the mind of
Catharine,--and Russian proconsuls ruling on the Ganges, India could no
more be to Russia what she has been to England, than the Crimea, had he
kept it, could have been to Louis Napoleon what it is to the Czar. The
condition of Indian dominion is ocean dominion.
In one respect the Indian empire of England resembles the Roman empire.
The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and
so is it with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it
constituted one country, and were inhabited by a homogeneous people, that
it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be
found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and
the Deccan there are ten different civilized nations, resembling each other
no more than Danes resemble Italians, or Spaniards Poles. They differ in
moral, physical, and intellectual conditions,--in modes of thought and in
modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy,
just as a similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome,
but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over
Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and other Eastern peoples, with ease, because
they had little in common, and could not combine against their conquerors.
They did the same in the West, because the inhabitants of that quarter, if
left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The
old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of
Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable
places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta.
The peculiar condition of India a hundred years since enabled the English
to lay the foundations of their power in that country so broadly and so
deep that nothing short of a moral convulsion can uproot them, though the
edifice erected upon them may be rudely shaken by internal revolts, or by
the consequences of external wars. Fifty years sooner or forty years later,
the English could have made no impression on India as conquerors. Seventy
years before the conquest of Bengal the English traders had been plundered
by a viceroy who anticipated the tyranny of Surajah Doulah.
They determined not to submit to such exactions. They resolved upon war. But the great
Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire
had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by
Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as
children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and
Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire. The punishment
of death was visited upon some of the East India Company's officers and
servants by the Moghul. This severe lesson made a deep impression on the
English. They resumed their humble position as traders on sufferance. They
never thought of conquest again. It was not until every man who had been
concerned in that business had long been in his grave, that the English
dared so much as to think of making another war. Though the Moghuls
rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck
by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the
ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir
Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak
as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the
English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it
is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and
inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use
of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive
grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a
union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command of the French
in the East, that he was at first desirous of making peace with Surajah
Doulah himself. When the arrival of reinforcements had induced him to
take a bolder course, and the destruction of that fierce viceroy had been
resolved upon, it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and
against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon
which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in
fighting a pitched battle against a force nearly twenty times larger than
his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good
soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally
as their predecessors of 1687; but as he was as destitute of humanity as of
courage and skill, and could neither animate his followers by affection nor
command them by force of character, he was utterly routed. Not six hundred
men fell in the battle of Plassey, on both sides, and most of these were on
the side of the vanquished. Seldom has it happened that so mighty a change
has been effected with so little slaughter. One is reminded of the battles
fought by the few Romans under Lucullus against the entire array of the
Armenian monarchy.
Had circumstances not led to the display of British power at the time when
great prizes were sure to follow even from minor exertions, England never
could have become mistress of India. Had the English remained traders
forty years longer,--or even for half that time, perhaps,--they would have
encountered very different foes from those which they overthrew so easily
when forced to fight for property and life. India was breaking up in 1757,
and the process of reformation was about to begin. Had not the English been
brought into the vast arena, either a number of powerful monarchies would
have been formed, or the whole country would have passed under some new
dynasty, which would have revived the power of the state with that rapidity
which is so often exhibited in the East, when new and able men assume the
reins of government. Hyder Ali might have made himself the master of all
India, had it been his lot to contend only with native rulers and native
races. Had this been the course of events, and had circumstances brought
him into collision with the East India Company when he had made himself the
Moghul's successor, can it be believed that he would have experienced any
more difficulty in dealing with them than was found by Aurungzebe? We know
that the English found in Hyder a very able foe, with but limited means
at his disposal, and when they were masters of half the country, and had
been almost uniformly victorious. Can it be supposed that they could have
effected anything against all India, ruled by so consummate a statesman as
Hyder Ali? There seems to have been something providential in the events
that caused them to pass from traders to conquerors, at the only time when
such a transition could be made either with safety of success. That their
career of conquest has been occasionally marked by injustice and crime
proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by
a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery
of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains
impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to
say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to
be made from among men specially entitled to the honors of canonisation.
The English have frequently been denounced, not only for their errors in
governing India, but for their conquest of that country. The French have
been especially fervent in these denunciations. It is a fact, however, that
the French saw nothing wrong in subduing India until all their own plans
to that end had utterly failed. The device originated with them, but the
English applied it. Dupleix planned for France what Clive executed for
England. The French adhered to their plans for years, and it was not until
a very recent period that the last remnants of their influence disappeared
from India. They saw not the evil involved in the overthrowing of virtuous
nabobs and venerable viceroys, until time and a whole train of events had
proved that England alone was competent to the full performance of the
work. The English in India have not, on all occasions, been saints; but we
are unable to see what moral right the French have to reproach them with
the enumeration of their errors. In the East, France was "overcrowed" by
England; and that is the sole and the very simple cause of the vast amount
of "sympathy" which the French have bestowed upon suffering Indian princes,
whose condition in no sense would have been improved, had fortune favored
the Gallic race, instead of the Saxon, in their struggle for supremacy in
Hindostan.
The prejudice that exists in many minds against England, concerning her
Indian empire, is in no small degree owing to something of which she is
justly proud; to the talent that characterized the prosecution--his friends
called it the persecution--of Warren Hastings. No man, not even Strafford,
when borne down by the whole weight of the country party in the first
session of the Long Parliament, ever encountered so able a host as that
which set itself to effect the ruin of the great British proconsul. He
was acquitted by his judges, but he stands blackened forever on the most
magnificent pages of his country's eloquence. Burke's speeches are yet read
everywhere; and to Burke, Hastings was the principle of Evil incarnate.
The two great divisions of civilized mankind hold Burke in lasting
remembrance,--the liberals for his labors in the early part of his life,
and the conservatives for big writings against the French Revolution; and
it is impossible to admire him without condemning Hastings. It is equally
impossible to condemn Hastings without condemning the nation for which he
performed deeds so vicious and cruel, and which formally acquitted him of
each and every charge preferred by Burke and his immortal associates, in
the name of the Commons of England. Even those charges were the result, not
of conscientious conviction on the part of the Commons, but of Mr. Pitt's
determination to crush one who promised to become a formidable political
rival. The arguments and eloquence of such men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and
Grey, constitute a splendid armory, from which the enemies of England can
forever draw admirable weapons with which to assail her Indian policy; and
they have not been backward in making use of this mighty advantage. No one,
who has ever sought to defend England's course in the East, but has had
experience of the difficulties which those great men have placed in the
way of a successful vindication of their country's cause. Either they were
honest, or they were not. If honest, what shall be said of the nation which
would not listen to them? If dishonest, what are we to think of men, the
first statesmen of their age, who, for mere party ends, had persecuted to
his ruin one who was in no respect their inferior, and who had saved India
for England? Our own opinion Is that Burke and his associates were honest,
and that the only dishonest men in the prosecuting party were William Pitt
and Henry Dundas,--the first being chief minister, and the other second
only to the premier himself in the government. Pitt talked much of his
conscience, after having absolved Hastings on the very worst of the charges
that had been preferred against him, and then condemned him on lighter
charges. When Roger Wildrake heard the landlord at Windsor talk much of
his conscience, he was led to observe that his measures were less and his
charges larger than they had been in those earlier times when sin was
allowed to take its natural course. It was so with Pitt, who was guilty
of gross injustice, according to his own arguments, and then threw his
conscience into the scale against the accused party, when he saw that
that party's acquittal would probably lead to his being converted into a
successful political rival. Hastings deserved severe censure, and no light
punishment, for some of his deeds; but not even Burke would have condemned
him to the slow torture to which he was sentenced by one who believed
him to be innocent, and the object of party persecution. But the nice
distinctions which Englishmen and Americans can make in the cause and
course of this famous state trial, because they live in the very atmosphere
of party politics, are utterly unknown to the men of continental Europe;
and until the end of time, England will be condemned out of the mouths of
her most brilliant sons, whenever her foes--and she is too great not to
have many and bitter foes--shall discuss the history of her Indian empire.
Every nation condemns conquest, and every nation with power to enter upon
a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation
that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded
from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other
nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the
independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She
has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder
in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India as the
East India Company, or the house of Hanover; and the viceroys sent to
rule over its vast and populous provinces had the same bases of power as
were possessed by Clive, and Hastings, and Wellesley, and Bentinck, and
Ellenborough, and Dalhousie. The Moghuls obtained Indian dominion by
conquests that were rendered easy by Indian troubles; and this is precisely
the history of England's Oriental dominion. What difference there is, is
favorable to England. The Moghuls were deliberate invaders of India; the
founder of that dynasty being an adventurer who sought an empire sword in
hand, and won it by violence which no man had provoked. Baber was to India
what the Norman William was to England. He long contemplated the conquest
of the country, showing a wolf-like perseverance in hunting down his prey.
For two-and-twenty years he had his object in view, and invaded India five
times before he obtained the throne of Delhi. The English were forced to
assume the part of conquerors, and would gladly have remained traders.
They did not commence their military career until the Moghul had become a
mere shadow, and when that potentate was altogether unable to protect them
against the tyrannical practices of his lieutenants. They had to choose
between war and extermination, and they belonged to a race which never
hesitates when forced to make such a choice. Their wars were waged with the
Moghul's viceroys, who were aiming at the foundation of dynastic rule, each
in his own government, or with other princes, who were equally usurpers
with those viceroys, the Mahratta chiefs, for example, and Hyder Ali.
One war led to another, in all of which the English were victorious,
until their power extended itself over all India. In one hundred and six
years--dating from the capture of Madras by the French in 1746, which event
must be taken as the commencement of their military career in India, and
closing with the annexation of Pegu, December 28, 1852,--they had completed
their work. That, in the course of operations so mighty, and relating to
the condition of so many millions of people, they were sometimes guilty of
acts of singular injustice, is true, and might be inferred, if there were
no facts upon which to base the charge. It is impossible that it should
have been otherwise, considering the nature of man, and the character of
many of the instruments by which great enterprises are accomplished. But we
think it may safely be said, that never was there a career of conquest of
such extent accompanied with so little of wrong and suffering to the body
of the people. As against the wrong that was perpetrated, and the suffering
that was inseparable from wars so numerous and long-continued, are to be
set the reign of order and law, under which the mass of the inhabitants
have been able to cultivate their fields in quiet, and with the assurance
that they should reap where they had sowed, undisturbed by the incursions
of robber-bands. The cessation of the Mahratta invasions alone is an ample
compensation for whatever of evil may have marked the course of British
conquest. The stop that has been put to the cruelties of the native rulers
ought not to be forgotten in estimating the amount of evil and of good
which that conquest has brought upon India. The world has been shocked by
the cruelties of which the rebellious Sepoys have been guilty; but they
can astonish no one who is familiar with the history of the races to which
these mutineers belong. An indifference to life, and a love of cruelty for
cruelty's sake, are common characteristics of most of the Orientals, and
are chiefly conspicuous in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history
sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors
of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have
prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been
in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn
the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be
doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more
closely, if they had acted the part of tyrants rather than of protectors.
By ruling through the princes, and allowing them to act as "middle-men,"
they would have been less troubled with mutinies, and could have amassed
greater sums of money. It is to their credit that they have pursued
the nobler course; nor ought they to repent of it even in the midst of
disasters brought upon them, we are firmly convinced, as much by the
mildness of their rule as by any other cause that can be mentioned.
It is yet too early to attempt to account for the rebellion of the Bengal
army. That rebellion took the world by surprise, and nowhere more so, it
would seem, than in England. A remarkable proof of this is to be found in
the tone and language of the debate that took place in the British House of
Commons on the 27th of July, in which Mr. Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Lord
John Russell, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. T. Baring, Sir T.E. Perry, Mr. Mangles,
Mr. Vernon Smith, and others, participated. That debate was most lively and
interesting; and the reading of the ample report in the "Times" revives the
recollection of the great field-days of the English senate. Mr. Disraeli's
speech is a masterpiece, and would have done honor to times when eloquence
was far more common than it is now. Yet the conclusion to which the careful
reader of the report must come is, that neither Mr. Disraeli, nor the
Premier, nor the President of the Board of Control, nor the Chairman of
the Directors of the East India Company, nor any other of the speakers,
had a definite idea of the cause of the sudden mutiny of the Sepoys. It
is impossible not to admire Mr. Disraeli's talents, as displayed in this
speech; and equally impossible is it to find in that speech anything that
an intelligent observer of Indian affairs can regard as settling the
question, Why did the Sepoys of the Bengal army mutiny in 1857? Everything
that he brought forward as a cause of the mutiny was distinctly proved not
to be worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had
failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The
government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and
there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the
President of the Board of Control.
It is not for us to speak authoritatively as to the cause of the Sepoy
mutiny, but we venture to express our concurrence with those who have
regarded it as, in considerable measure, of Mahometan origin. The Mahometan
rule was displaced by the British rule. The Mahometans were for centuries
the aristocracy of India, standing to the genuine Indians in pretty much
the same relation that the Normans held to the Saxons in England; only
it is but justice to them to say, that they rarely bore themselves so
offensively towards the Indians as the Normans were accustomed to bear
themselves towards the English. They have never lost the recollection of
their former _status_, or ceased to sigh for its restoration. Nor is the
time so very remote when they were yet great in the land. Old men among
them can recollect when Tippoo Saib was treated as an equal by the English,
and have not forgotten how powerful was his father, Hyder. Some few
aged Mussulmans there may be yet living who heard from their sires or
grandsires, who saw it with their mortal eyes, of the glories of the
magnificent Aurungzebe, ere the Persian, or the Affghan, or the Mahratta
had carried fire and sword into Shahjehanabad. Two not over-long lives
would measure the whole interval of time between the punishment of the
English by Aurungzebe and the mutiny at Meerut. Time enough has not yet
elapsed to cause the Mahometans to forget what they have been, or to cease
to hope that they may yet surpass their fathers. They are not actuated by
anything of a sentimental character, but desire to win back, and to enjoy
at the expense of the Indian races, the solid advantages of which they
have been deprived through the ascendency of a Christian people in the
East. "Mahometans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Mahometan
_regime_," says Colonel Sleeman, "not from any particular attachment to the
descendants of Tymour, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and
Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England;
it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything.
Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own
abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good
luck; and all think, that if the field were once opened to them by such a
change, they should very soon be able to find good positions for themselves
and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world,
among whom education is more generally diffused than among the Mahometans
in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly
gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime-minister." [Footnote:
_Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_, Vol. II. pp. 282,
283.--Colonel Sleeman's work is one of the best ever published on
India,--learned, liberal, and philosophical. It has been highly praised
by so competent a judge as Mr. Grote.] This very capability for rule must
render them not only all the more desirous of obtaining it, but exceedingly
dangerous as seekers after it. They are not an ignorant rabble, but men who
have an intelligent idea of what they want, and rational modes of effecting
its realization. Colonel Sleeman adds, "It is not only the desire for
office that makes the educated Mahometans cherish the recollection of
the old _regime_ in Hindostan; they say, 'We pray every night for the
Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate of the salt of His
forefathers,'--that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors,
and consequently were of the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they
really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that
they were." In this way the idea of superiority has been kept up among the
Mahometans of India; and they have continued to hope for the restoration
of their old political supremacy, as pious Jews dream of the rebuilding of
Zion. That they were at the bottom of the Meerut mutiny may be taken for
granted. That they took for their leader the heir of the Moghul shows the
Mahometan nature of the outbreak. At the same time, we believe that if
it had not been for the imbecility of Hewitt, who commanded at Meerut,
the mutiny never would have occurred, or the mutineers would have been
promptly put down. Even after they had escaped from Meerut, Delhi never
could have fallen into their hands, if that city--so important, morally
and geographically, as well as in a military point of view--had not
been without a garrison. That a station of such consequence, stored so
abundantly with all the munitions of war, should have been left in an
utterly defenceless condition, is a fact that creates inexpressible
astonishment, notwithstanding all that happened during the Russian war. Mr.
Whiteside, in the debate of the 27th of July, stated that the late General
Sir C.J. Napier "said of Delhi, that to guard against surprise, considering
its position, its treasures, and its magazines, it should always be
defended by twelve thousand picked men." From all that appears, there were
not twelve hundred men, or anything like that number, of any kind, in
Delhi, last May, to protect either the inhabitants or the stores there
deposited. Such another instance of neglect it would be impossible to find
in history, after due warning given. Long ago, Albany Fonblanque said, "The
sign of the fool with his finger in his mouth, and the sentiment, 'Who'd
have thought it?' is the precise emblem of English jurisprudence." The same
sign would seem to be applicable to some other branches of the English
public service, as well as to that of the law. Perhaps it was because
of the warning that nothing was done,--that being the usual course with
governments; while it was thought a duty to treat with a sort of spiteful
neglect every warning that came from Sir C.J. Napier, because he had a
rough, fiery way of expressing his opinion of the folly of those who are
perpetually giving occasion for warnings which they never heed,--as if in
all ages roughness and fire had not been especial characteristics of the
prophetic office.
BRITISH INDIA.
The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the
government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war
with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations
having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order
that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally. Frederic was
defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian
army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay,
and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and
capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English
commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William
Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India,
the English were engaged in a doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal,
who was supported by the French. Even the navy of England appeared at
that time to have lost its sense of superiority; for not only had Admiral
Byng just been shot for not behaving with proper spirit, but a combined
expedition against the coast of France ended in signal failure, and Admiral
Holburne declined to attack a French fleet off Louisburg. No wonder that
the British people readily believed an author who then published a work to
establish the agreeable proposition, "that they were a race of cowards and
scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of
being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate."
Such a succession of disasters might well discourage a people, some of whom
could recollect the long list of victories which commenced with Blenheim
and closed with Malplaquet, and by which the arrogance of the Grand
Monarque had been punished.
Yet it is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern
England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the
Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,--cold,
comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season
have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the
pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which
succeeded in carrying England's power and glory to heights which they
did not reach even under the Protectorship of Cromwell or the rule of
Godolphin. Then were commenced those measures which ended in the expulsion
of the French from North America, and gave to England a territory here
which may perpetuate her institutions for ages after they shall have ceased
to be known in the mother-land. Then was America conquered in Germany, and
not only was Frederic so assisted as to be able to contend successfully
against the three great houses of Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanoff, and a
horde of lesser dynasties, but British armies, at Minden and Creveldt,
renewed on the fields of the continent recollections of the island skill
and the island courage. Then was a new spirit breathed into the British
marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom
stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which
gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba,
and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that
Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder,
and of not a little envy; for on the 23d of June, 1757, was fought the
battle of Plassey, the first of those many Indian victories that illustrate
the names of Clive, Coote, Wellesley, Gough, Napier, and numerous other
heroes. It seems odd, that the interest in Indian affairs should have been
suddenly and strangely revived in the hundredth year after the victory that
laid Bengal at the feet of an English adventurer. Had the insurgent Sepoys
delayed action but a few weeks, they might have inaugurated their movement
on the very centennial anniversary of the birth of British India.
There is nothing like the rule of the English in India to be found in
history. It has been compared to the dominion which Rome held over so large
a portion of the world; but the comparison has not the merit of aptness.
The population of the Roman Empire, in the age of the Antonines, has been
estimated at 120,000,000, including that of Italy. The population of
India is not less than 150,000,000, without counting any portion of the
conquering race. Rome was favorably situated for the maintenance of her
supremacy, as she had been for the work of conquest. Her dominion lay
around the Mediterranean, which Italy pierced, looking to the East and the
West, and forming, as it were, a great place of arms, whence to subdue or
to overawe the nations. Cicero called the Hellenic states and colonies a
fringe on the skirts of Barbarism, and the description applies also to the
Roman dominion; for though Gaul and Spain were conquered from sea to sea,
and the legions were encamped on the Euphrates, and the valley of the Nile
was as submissive to the Caesars as it had been to the Lagidse, yet the
Mediterranean was the basis of Roman power, and a short journey in almost
any direction from it would have taken the traveller completely from
under the protection of the eagles. Not so is it with British India. From
no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions
are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most
powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause
of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the
sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able
to maintain her naval supremacy. Those who predict her downfall in the
East, either as a consequence of the natives throwing off her rule, or
through a Russian invasion, forget that she entered India from the sea,
and that until she shall have been subdued on that element it would be
idle to think of dispossessing her of her Oriental supremacy. Were the
long-cherished dream of Russia to be realized,--a dream that is said to
have troubled the sleep of Peter, and which certainly haunted the mind of
Catharine,--and Russian proconsuls ruling on the Ganges, India could no
more be to Russia what she has been to England, than the Crimea, had he
kept it, could have been to Louis Napoleon what it is to the Czar. The
condition of Indian dominion is ocean dominion.
In one respect the Indian empire of England resembles the Roman empire.
The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and
so is it with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it
constituted one country, and were inhabited by a homogeneous people, that
it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be
found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and
the Deccan there are ten different civilized nations, resembling each other
no more than Danes resemble Italians, or Spaniards Poles. They differ in
moral, physical, and intellectual conditions,--in modes of thought and in
modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy,
just as a similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome,
but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over
Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and other Eastern peoples, with ease, because
they had little in common, and could not combine against their conquerors.
They did the same in the West, because the inhabitants of that quarter, if
left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The
old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of
Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable
places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta.
The peculiar condition of India a hundred years since enabled the English
to lay the foundations of their power in that country so broadly and so
deep that nothing short of a moral convulsion can uproot them, though the
edifice erected upon them may be rudely shaken by internal revolts, or by
the consequences of external wars. Fifty years sooner or forty years later,
the English could have made no impression on India as conquerors. Seventy
years before the conquest of Bengal the English traders had been plundered
by a viceroy who anticipated the tyranny of Surajah Doulah.
They determined not to submit to such exactions. They resolved upon war. But the great
Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire
had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by
Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as
children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and
Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire. The punishment
of death was visited upon some of the East India Company's officers and
servants by the Moghul. This severe lesson made a deep impression on the
English. They resumed their humble position as traders on sufferance. They
never thought of conquest again. It was not until every man who had been
concerned in that business had long been in his grave, that the English
dared so much as to think of making another war. Though the Moghuls
rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck
by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the
ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir
Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak
as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the
English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it
is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and
inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use
of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive
grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a
union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command of the French
in the East, that he was at first desirous of making peace with Surajah
Doulah himself. When the arrival of reinforcements had induced him to
take a bolder course, and the destruction of that fierce viceroy had been
resolved upon, it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and
against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon
which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in
fighting a pitched battle against a force nearly twenty times larger than
his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good
soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally
as their predecessors of 1687; but as he was as destitute of humanity as of
courage and skill, and could neither animate his followers by affection nor
command them by force of character, he was utterly routed. Not six hundred
men fell in the battle of Plassey, on both sides, and most of these were on
the side of the vanquished. Seldom has it happened that so mighty a change
has been effected with so little slaughter. One is reminded of the battles
fought by the few Romans under Lucullus against the entire array of the
Armenian monarchy.
Had circumstances not led to the display of British power at the time when
great prizes were sure to follow even from minor exertions, England never
could have become mistress of India. Had the English remained traders
forty years longer,--or even for half that time, perhaps,--they would have
encountered very different foes from those which they overthrew so easily
when forced to fight for property and life. India was breaking up in 1757,
and the process of reformation was about to begin. Had not the English been
brought into the vast arena, either a number of powerful monarchies would
have been formed, or the whole country would have passed under some new
dynasty, which would have revived the power of the state with that rapidity
which is so often exhibited in the East, when new and able men assume the
reins of government. Hyder Ali might have made himself the master of all
India, had it been his lot to contend only with native rulers and native
races. Had this been the course of events, and had circumstances brought
him into collision with the East India Company when he had made himself the
Moghul's successor, can it be believed that he would have experienced any
more difficulty in dealing with them than was found by Aurungzebe? We know
that the English found in Hyder a very able foe, with but limited means
at his disposal, and when they were masters of half the country, and had
been almost uniformly victorious. Can it be supposed that they could have
effected anything against all India, ruled by so consummate a statesman as
Hyder Ali? There seems to have been something providential in the events
that caused them to pass from traders to conquerors, at the only time when
such a transition could be made either with safety of success. That their
career of conquest has been occasionally marked by injustice and crime
proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by
a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery
of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains
impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to
say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to
be made from among men specially entitled to the honors of canonisation.
The English have frequently been denounced, not only for their errors in
governing India, but for their conquest of that country. The French have
been especially fervent in these denunciations. It is a fact, however, that
the French saw nothing wrong in subduing India until all their own plans
to that end had utterly failed. The device originated with them, but the
English applied it. Dupleix planned for France what Clive executed for
England. The French adhered to their plans for years, and it was not until
a very recent period that the last remnants of their influence disappeared
from India. They saw not the evil involved in the overthrowing of virtuous
nabobs and venerable viceroys, until time and a whole train of events had
proved that England alone was competent to the full performance of the
work. The English in India have not, on all occasions, been saints; but we
are unable to see what moral right the French have to reproach them with
the enumeration of their errors. In the East, France was "overcrowed" by
England; and that is the sole and the very simple cause of the vast amount
of "sympathy" which the French have bestowed upon suffering Indian princes,
whose condition in no sense would have been improved, had fortune favored
the Gallic race, instead of the Saxon, in their struggle for supremacy in
Hindostan.
The prejudice that exists in many minds against England, concerning her
Indian empire, is in no small degree owing to something of which she is
justly proud; to the talent that characterized the prosecution--his friends
called it the persecution--of Warren Hastings. No man, not even Strafford,
when borne down by the whole weight of the country party in the first
session of the Long Parliament, ever encountered so able a host as that
which set itself to effect the ruin of the great British proconsul. He
was acquitted by his judges, but he stands blackened forever on the most
magnificent pages of his country's eloquence. Burke's speeches are yet read
everywhere; and to Burke, Hastings was the principle of Evil incarnate.
The two great divisions of civilized mankind hold Burke in lasting
remembrance,--the liberals for his labors in the early part of his life,
and the conservatives for big writings against the French Revolution; and
it is impossible to admire him without condemning Hastings. It is equally
impossible to condemn Hastings without condemning the nation for which he
performed deeds so vicious and cruel, and which formally acquitted him of
each and every charge preferred by Burke and his immortal associates, in
the name of the Commons of England. Even those charges were the result, not
of conscientious conviction on the part of the Commons, but of Mr. Pitt's
determination to crush one who promised to become a formidable political
rival. The arguments and eloquence of such men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and
Grey, constitute a splendid armory, from which the enemies of England can
forever draw admirable weapons with which to assail her Indian policy; and
they have not been backward in making use of this mighty advantage. No one,
who has ever sought to defend England's course in the East, but has had
experience of the difficulties which those great men have placed in the
way of a successful vindication of their country's cause. Either they were
honest, or they were not. If honest, what shall be said of the nation which
would not listen to them? If dishonest, what are we to think of men, the
first statesmen of their age, who, for mere party ends, had persecuted to
his ruin one who was in no respect their inferior, and who had saved India
for England? Our own opinion Is that Burke and his associates were honest,
and that the only dishonest men in the prosecuting party were William Pitt
and Henry Dundas,--the first being chief minister, and the other second
only to the premier himself in the government. Pitt talked much of his
conscience, after having absolved Hastings on the very worst of the charges
that had been preferred against him, and then condemned him on lighter
charges. When Roger Wildrake heard the landlord at Windsor talk much of
his conscience, he was led to observe that his measures were less and his
charges larger than they had been in those earlier times when sin was
allowed to take its natural course. It was so with Pitt, who was guilty
of gross injustice, according to his own arguments, and then threw his
conscience into the scale against the accused party, when he saw that
that party's acquittal would probably lead to his being converted into a
successful political rival. Hastings deserved severe censure, and no light
punishment, for some of his deeds; but not even Burke would have condemned
him to the slow torture to which he was sentenced by one who believed
him to be innocent, and the object of party persecution. But the nice
distinctions which Englishmen and Americans can make in the cause and
course of this famous state trial, because they live in the very atmosphere
of party politics, are utterly unknown to the men of continental Europe;
and until the end of time, England will be condemned out of the mouths of
her most brilliant sons, whenever her foes--and she is too great not to
have many and bitter foes--shall discuss the history of her Indian empire.
Every nation condemns conquest, and every nation with power to enter upon
a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation
that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded
from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other
nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the
independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She
has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder
in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India as the
East India Company, or the house of Hanover; and the viceroys sent to
rule over its vast and populous provinces had the same bases of power as
were possessed by Clive, and Hastings, and Wellesley, and Bentinck, and
Ellenborough, and Dalhousie. The Moghuls obtained Indian dominion by
conquests that were rendered easy by Indian troubles; and this is precisely
the history of England's Oriental dominion. What difference there is, is
favorable to England. The Moghuls were deliberate invaders of India; the
founder of that dynasty being an adventurer who sought an empire sword in
hand, and won it by violence which no man had provoked. Baber was to India
what the Norman William was to England. He long contemplated the conquest
of the country, showing a wolf-like perseverance in hunting down his prey.
For two-and-twenty years he had his object in view, and invaded India five
times before he obtained the throne of Delhi. The English were forced to
assume the part of conquerors, and would gladly have remained traders.
They did not commence their military career until the Moghul had become a
mere shadow, and when that potentate was altogether unable to protect them
against the tyrannical practices of his lieutenants. They had to choose
between war and extermination, and they belonged to a race which never
hesitates when forced to make such a choice. Their wars were waged with the
Moghul's viceroys, who were aiming at the foundation of dynastic rule, each
in his own government, or with other princes, who were equally usurpers
with those viceroys, the Mahratta chiefs, for example, and Hyder Ali.
One war led to another, in all of which the English were victorious,
until their power extended itself over all India. In one hundred and six
years--dating from the capture of Madras by the French in 1746, which event
must be taken as the commencement of their military career in India, and
closing with the annexation of Pegu, December 28, 1852,--they had completed
their work. That, in the course of operations so mighty, and relating to
the condition of so many millions of people, they were sometimes guilty of
acts of singular injustice, is true, and might be inferred, if there were
no facts upon which to base the charge. It is impossible that it should
have been otherwise, considering the nature of man, and the character of
many of the instruments by which great enterprises are accomplished. But we
think it may safely be said, that never was there a career of conquest of
such extent accompanied with so little of wrong and suffering to the body
of the people. As against the wrong that was perpetrated, and the suffering
that was inseparable from wars so numerous and long-continued, are to be
set the reign of order and law, under which the mass of the inhabitants
have been able to cultivate their fields in quiet, and with the assurance
that they should reap where they had sowed, undisturbed by the incursions
of robber-bands. The cessation of the Mahratta invasions alone is an ample
compensation for whatever of evil may have marked the course of British
conquest. The stop that has been put to the cruelties of the native rulers
ought not to be forgotten in estimating the amount of evil and of good
which that conquest has brought upon India. The world has been shocked by
the cruelties of which the rebellious Sepoys have been guilty; but they
can astonish no one who is familiar with the history of the races to which
these mutineers belong. An indifference to life, and a love of cruelty for
cruelty's sake, are common characteristics of most of the Orientals, and
are chiefly conspicuous in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history
sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors
of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have
prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been
in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn
the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be
doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more
closely, if they had acted the part of tyrants rather than of protectors.
By ruling through the princes, and allowing them to act as "middle-men,"
they would have been less troubled with mutinies, and could have amassed
greater sums of money. It is to their credit that they have pursued
the nobler course; nor ought they to repent of it even in the midst of
disasters brought upon them, we are firmly convinced, as much by the
mildness of their rule as by any other cause that can be mentioned.
It is yet too early to attempt to account for the rebellion of the Bengal
army. That rebellion took the world by surprise, and nowhere more so, it
would seem, than in England. A remarkable proof of this is to be found in
the tone and language of the debate that took place in the British House of
Commons on the 27th of July, in which Mr. Disraeli, Lord Palmerston, Lord
John Russell, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. T. Baring, Sir T.E. Perry, Mr. Mangles,
Mr. Vernon Smith, and others, participated. That debate was most lively and
interesting; and the reading of the ample report in the "Times" revives the
recollection of the great field-days of the English senate. Mr. Disraeli's
speech is a masterpiece, and would have done honor to times when eloquence
was far more common than it is now. Yet the conclusion to which the careful
reader of the report must come is, that neither Mr. Disraeli, nor the
Premier, nor the President of the Board of Control, nor the Chairman of
the Directors of the East India Company, nor any other of the speakers,
had a definite idea of the cause of the sudden mutiny of the Sepoys. It
is impossible not to admire Mr. Disraeli's talents, as displayed in this
speech; and equally impossible is it to find in that speech anything that
an intelligent observer of Indian affairs can regard as settling the
question, Why did the Sepoys of the Bengal army mutiny in 1857? Everything
that he brought forward as a cause of the mutiny was distinctly proved not
to be worthy of the name of a cause. Yet the men who could show that he had
failed to clear up the mystery could themselves throw no light upon it. The
government was especially ignorant of all that it should have known; and
there is something almost ludicrous in the tone of the speech made by the
President of the Board of Control.
It is not for us to speak authoritatively as to the cause of the Sepoy
mutiny, but we venture to express our concurrence with those who have
regarded it as, in considerable measure, of Mahometan origin. The Mahometan
rule was displaced by the British rule. The Mahometans were for centuries
the aristocracy of India, standing to the genuine Indians in pretty much
the same relation that the Normans held to the Saxons in England; only
it is but justice to them to say, that they rarely bore themselves so
offensively towards the Indians as the Normans were accustomed to bear
themselves towards the English. They have never lost the recollection of
their former _status_, or ceased to sigh for its restoration. Nor is the
time so very remote when they were yet great in the land. Old men among
them can recollect when Tippoo Saib was treated as an equal by the English,
and have not forgotten how powerful was his father, Hyder. Some few
aged Mussulmans there may be yet living who heard from their sires or
grandsires, who saw it with their mortal eyes, of the glories of the
magnificent Aurungzebe, ere the Persian, or the Affghan, or the Mahratta
had carried fire and sword into Shahjehanabad. Two not over-long lives
would measure the whole interval of time between the punishment of the
English by Aurungzebe and the mutiny at Meerut. Time enough has not yet
elapsed to cause the Mahometans to forget what they have been, or to cease
to hope that they may yet surpass their fathers. They are not actuated by
anything of a sentimental character, but desire to win back, and to enjoy
at the expense of the Indian races, the solid advantages of which they
have been deprived through the ascendency of a Christian people in the
East. "Mahometans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Mahometan
_regime_," says Colonel Sleeman, "not from any particular attachment to the
descendants of Tymour, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and
Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England;
it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything.
Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own
abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good
luck; and all think, that if the field were once opened to them by such a
change, they should very soon be able to find good positions for themselves
and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world,
among whom education is more generally diffused than among the Mahometans
in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly
gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime-minister." [Footnote:
_Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_, Vol. II. pp. 282,
283.--Colonel Sleeman's work is one of the best ever published on
India,--learned, liberal, and philosophical. It has been highly praised
by so competent a judge as Mr. Grote.] This very capability for rule must
render them not only all the more desirous of obtaining it, but exceedingly
dangerous as seekers after it. They are not an ignorant rabble, but men who
have an intelligent idea of what they want, and rational modes of effecting
its realization. Colonel Sleeman adds, "It is not only the desire for
office that makes the educated Mahometans cherish the recollection of
the old _regime_ in Hindostan; they say, 'We pray every night for the
Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate of the salt of His
forefathers,'--that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors,
and consequently were of the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they
really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that
they were." In this way the idea of superiority has been kept up among the
Mahometans of India; and they have continued to hope for the restoration
of their old political supremacy, as pious Jews dream of the rebuilding of
Zion. That they were at the bottom of the Meerut mutiny may be taken for
granted. That they took for their leader the heir of the Moghul shows the
Mahometan nature of the outbreak. At the same time, we believe that if
it had not been for the imbecility of Hewitt, who commanded at Meerut,
the mutiny never would have occurred, or the mutineers would have been
promptly put down. Even after they had escaped from Meerut, Delhi never
could have fallen into their hands, if that city--so important, morally
and geographically, as well as in a military point of view--had not
been without a garrison. That a station of such consequence, stored so
abundantly with all the munitions of war, should have been left in an
utterly defenceless condition, is a fact that creates inexpressible
astonishment, notwithstanding all that happened during the Russian war. Mr.
Whiteside, in the debate of the 27th of July, stated that the late General
Sir C.J. Napier "said of Delhi, that to guard against surprise, considering
its position, its treasures, and its magazines, it should always be
defended by twelve thousand picked men." From all that appears, there were
not twelve hundred men, or anything like that number, of any kind, in
Delhi, last May, to protect either the inhabitants or the stores there
deposited. Such another instance of neglect it would be impossible to find
in history, after due warning given. Long ago, Albany Fonblanque said, "The
sign of the fool with his finger in his mouth, and the sentiment, 'Who'd
have thought it?' is the precise emblem of English jurisprudence." The same
sign would seem to be applicable to some other branches of the English
public service, as well as to that of the law. Perhaps it was because
of the warning that nothing was done,--that being the usual course with
governments; while it was thought a duty to treat with a sort of spiteful
neglect every warning that came from Sir C.J. Napier, because he had a
rough, fiery way of expressing his opinion of the folly of those who are
perpetually giving occasion for warnings which they never heed,--as if in
all ages roughness and fire had not been especial characteristics of the
prophetic office.
Victor Davis Hanson responds to the archbishop
I suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams read a little history about the British experience in India before he offers politically-correct but historically laughable sermons like the one he gave to a Muslim "lifestyle" magazine:
Williams should read a little about British military campaigns in India, and then count the corpses.
he should also tally up the amount of money the U.S. has spent for civic and economic development in Iraq over four years, and then compare that to what Britain invested in any four-year period in their centuries-long occupation of India.
Rowan should read a little bit more of history. Some of these old Brit fogies tend to view these things through rose-tinted eye glasses and red-tinted wineglasses. I'm sure his views will be given the importance that it deserves 
"pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it" indeed!!! Jackass.
"pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it" indeed!!! Jackass.
Army targets recruits with contact sport
The British army has come up with an innovative way of attracting ethnic minority recruits - it has taken up the Indian contact sport, kabaddi.
The BBC's Jatinder Sidhu went to see the Army's first kabaddi touring team in action in Punjab, India.
School nativity plays under threat
One school in Birmingham, where 96 per cent of children are Muslim, said: "We're reluctant to have a lot of music and acting because it goes against the religion of a lot of our pupils.
Navy would struggle to fight a war
With an "under-resourced" fleet composed of "ageing and operationally defective ships", the Navy would struggle even to repeat its role in the Iraq war and is now "far more vulnerable to unexpected shocks", the top-level Ministry of Defence document says.
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Rudranathh
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Why does it go against "religion of peace"?Afterall they regard Jesus as one of their prophets.Gerard wrote:School nativity plays under threatOne school in Birmingham, where 96 per cent of children are Muslim, said: "We're reluctant to have a lot of music and acting because it goes against the religion of a lot of our pupils.
Wary of Mohammed teddy row, UK author changes characters
First there was Mohammed the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian...Now there is Morgan the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian. A British children's author who named his fictitious mole Mohammed and the dog Dipak in an attempt to promote multi-culturalism, has backed away from the first for fear of offending Muslims.
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Rudranathh
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But that does not prevent them from acting in adult films.Gerard wrote:Acting (because women should remain in their houses)
If i remember correctly one of the taliban commander escaped dressed as an woman by wearing a burqa.Gerard wrote:and male actors dressed as women are haram) is against sharia.
And how can one forget the Lal masjid beardwalla on PakTv wearing a woman's dress.
Either burqa is not a woman's wear or Gerard "The Britainistani kafir" is spreading false info against the religion of peace.
Kafir,Kafir everywhere not a Momin to be found.
They forgot to tell A.R.Rahman about it.Gerard wrote:Music is also against sharia.
Kafir. He should have named a camel as Mohammed.Gerard wrote:Wary of Mohammed teddy row, UK author changes charactersFirst there was Mohammed the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian...Now there is Morgan the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian. A British children's author who named his fictitious mole Mohammed and the dog Dipak in an attempt to promote multi-culturalism, has backed away from the first for fear of offending Muslims.
When will these britainistanis receive enlightenment. Kafir britainistanis should be made to watch PissTv of Zakir Naik, only then they will understand and follow the final revealed religion.
US says it has right to kidnap British citizens (Times, London)
[quote]America has told Britain that it can “kidnapâ€
[quote]America has told Britain that it can “kidnapâ€
Well, he was fond of war and women...thats about it. Not much to go on for Muslims if they take him as an eternal font of wisdom.Gerard wrote:Acting (because women should remain in their houses and male actors dressed as women are haram) is against sharia.
Music is also against sharia.
And Mohammed wasn't too fond of poetry either...
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derkonig
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- Location: Jeering sekular forces bhile Furiously malishing my mijjile @ Led Lips Mijjile Malish Palish Parloul
to appreciate poetry, one needs to be literate atleast..JCage wrote:Well, he was fond of war and women...thats about it. Not much to go on for Muslims if they take him as an eternal font of wisdom.Gerard wrote:Acting (because women should remain in their houses and male actors dressed as women are haram) is against sharia.
Music is also against sharia.
And Mohammed wasn't too fond of poetry either...
Meanwhile... in the Islamic Emirate of England, Held-Wales, Occupied-Scotland and English-Administered-Ireland....
NURSES TOLD TO TURN MUSLIMS’ BEDS TO MECCA
NURSES TOLD TO TURN MUSLIMS’ BEDS TO MECCA
OVERWORKED nurses have been ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to move Muslim patients’ beds so they face towards Mecca.
It comes on the back of the introduction in some NHS hospitals last year of Burka-style gowns for Muslim patients who did not wish medical staff to see their face while operating or caring for them.
Mrs Briggs said: “Some of our former Muslim patients suggested that a more informed understanding of the Islamic cultures would help staff to further improve their service.â€
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Rudranathh
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You left out Occupied island of Gibraltar.Gerard wrote:Meanwhile... in the Islamic Emirate of England, Held-Wales, Occupied-Scotland and English-Administered-Ireland....
Mrs Briggs said: “Some of our former Muslim patients suggested that a more informed understanding of the Islamic cultures would help staff to further improve their service.â€
There is one French act in their colonialism which is of merit,in that they gave the colonised people French citizenship.Compare that with the shabby way the "Brits" of Hong Kong were abandoned and the measly inferior pay that the Gurkha's in British service get compared to other soldiers of British origin.It smacks of racism.The Archbishop of Cantebury in his wisdom is apparently hovering between earth and heaven and theerfore is so divorced from history and reality, with his head in thick clouds, that his utterances would add to our merriment if not for the fact that British colonialism contained more massive evil than good.This inescapable fact of history must be nailed to the door of Cantebury Cathedral, in Martin Luther fashion,so that this ignoramus might be enlightened before his pestilential preaching from the pulpit gets even more outrageous demanding more than a mea culpa!
Meanwhile,here'smore on the relentless Chinese espionage against the world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j ... mi5105.xml
MI5 calls in KPMG to warn of espionage
By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 05/12/2007
The security service MI5 has asked consultants KPMG to lead a group to monitor cases of industrial espionage and co-ordinate information between Britain's leading companies.
MI5 is increasingly concerned at attempts by foreign governments to hack into the computer systems of major firms, and last week accused China of trying to steal corporate secrets.
KPMG, which works closely with the GCHQ listening station, is creating a "risk management information exchange", with a team of security and IT experts to assess "threat levels" and warn of imminent dangers.
advertisement
If a company discovers attempts to breach computer security through, say, viruses, the information can be passed to MI5 and other companies using the KPMG group.
Last week, the director-general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, sent confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security heads at major companies warning about "electronic espionage" from "Chinese state organisations".
It was later reported that Rolls-Royce and Royal Dutch Shell had faced attempts to breach their computer security systems. The US and France have accused China of industrial espionage - which Beijing strongly denied. China has yet to respond to the MI5 claims.
Martin Jordan, principal adviser to KPMG on IT security, and head of the new group, said: "The intention is to give an early warning when threats appear. The information will be disseminated through a small group of people, but it will hopefully give MI5 a bigger overview of what is going on."
Meanwhile,here'smore on the relentless Chinese espionage against the world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j ... mi5105.xml
MI5 calls in KPMG to warn of espionage
By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:52am GMT 05/12/2007
The security service MI5 has asked consultants KPMG to lead a group to monitor cases of industrial espionage and co-ordinate information between Britain's leading companies.
MI5 is increasingly concerned at attempts by foreign governments to hack into the computer systems of major firms, and last week accused China of trying to steal corporate secrets.
KPMG, which works closely with the GCHQ listening station, is creating a "risk management information exchange", with a team of security and IT experts to assess "threat levels" and warn of imminent dangers.
advertisement
If a company discovers attempts to breach computer security through, say, viruses, the information can be passed to MI5 and other companies using the KPMG group.
Last week, the director-general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, sent confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security heads at major companies warning about "electronic espionage" from "Chinese state organisations".
It was later reported that Rolls-Royce and Royal Dutch Shell had faced attempts to breach their computer security systems. The US and France have accused China of industrial espionage - which Beijing strongly denied. China has yet to respond to the MI5 claims.
Martin Jordan, principal adviser to KPMG on IT security, and head of the new group, said: "The intention is to give an early warning when threats appear. The information will be disseminated through a small group of people, but it will hopefully give MI5 a bigger overview of what is going on."
Are these junkies suffering from exposure to the Afghan way of life too?
A "batallion a year" of junkies being dumped!That's huge.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politi ... 249880.ece
Big rise in cocaine use among soldiers
By Terri Judd
Published: 14 December 2007
The number of soldiers caught using cocaine has risen fourfold since the start of operations in Iraq.
At a time when the military is overstretched on two fronts, the British Army is discharging almost the equivalent of a battalion a year because of illegal drug use, figures published today by the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute.
Experts have warned of an increasing level of combat stress among troops with many turning to alcohol and drugs to deal with traumatic illness. They say personnel are using them to self-medicate and escape an uncomfortable reality.
Professor Sheila Bird, a scientist with the Medical Research Council writing in the RUSI Journal, said: "Repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan... may have contributed to the markedly increased positive rates.
"Any recourse to illegal drugs to counter combat stress may also mean that, disproportionately often, drug-discharged service personnel will have mental health problems that emerge in the short or longer term."
Studies into compulsory drug testing of army personnel revealed that there had been a 50 per cent rise in those failing the screening from 517 cases in 2003 to 769 in 2006. But the trend is most apparent for the class-A drug cocaine – which accounts for the majority of positive tests. The rate is up from 1.4 per 1,000 in 2003 to 5.7 per 1,000 in the first part of 2007. In 2006, cocaine accounted for more than half the failed tests (423), ahead of cannabis (221) and ecstasy (95). Other drugs taken included amphetamines, tranquillisers and, in one case, heroin. Figures up to October indicate that 2007 is following the same trend with 618 positive drug tests: 422 for class A substances, 20 for class B and 176 for class C.
Only last month the MoD confirmed that 17 soldiers from the 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) tested positive for drugs after a rest period in Cancun, Mexico.
The Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former army officer, said the increased availability in society and improved testing accounted for some of the rise but so did the additional strain placed on soldiers. He said: "In the Army of my day operational tours come round say every two years, now they are going round every year. Whilst we came back with one or two dead and couple of wounded, as we saw from the [2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment] service the other day, they suffered nine dead and 50 wounded. This puts a stress and strain on people. They will alleviate that strain through the use of relaxants, whether alcohol, abhorrent behaviour or use of drugs. We need to recognise that there is tension relief going on and drugs are being used.
While the hardline policy on drugs had served the Army well, the study said, problems with recruitment and retention meant the MoD needed to be sure that its near-zero tolerance approach was the best choice. While most offenders are dishonourably discharged, there is some flexibility in "exceptional circumstances" when a first-time offender below the rank of corporal is caught using non-class-A drugs.
A "batallion a year" of junkies being dumped!That's huge.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politi ... 249880.ece
Big rise in cocaine use among soldiers
By Terri Judd
Published: 14 December 2007
The number of soldiers caught using cocaine has risen fourfold since the start of operations in Iraq.
At a time when the military is overstretched on two fronts, the British Army is discharging almost the equivalent of a battalion a year because of illegal drug use, figures published today by the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute.
Experts have warned of an increasing level of combat stress among troops with many turning to alcohol and drugs to deal with traumatic illness. They say personnel are using them to self-medicate and escape an uncomfortable reality.
Professor Sheila Bird, a scientist with the Medical Research Council writing in the RUSI Journal, said: "Repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan... may have contributed to the markedly increased positive rates.
"Any recourse to illegal drugs to counter combat stress may also mean that, disproportionately often, drug-discharged service personnel will have mental health problems that emerge in the short or longer term."
Studies into compulsory drug testing of army personnel revealed that there had been a 50 per cent rise in those failing the screening from 517 cases in 2003 to 769 in 2006. But the trend is most apparent for the class-A drug cocaine – which accounts for the majority of positive tests. The rate is up from 1.4 per 1,000 in 2003 to 5.7 per 1,000 in the first part of 2007. In 2006, cocaine accounted for more than half the failed tests (423), ahead of cannabis (221) and ecstasy (95). Other drugs taken included amphetamines, tranquillisers and, in one case, heroin. Figures up to October indicate that 2007 is following the same trend with 618 positive drug tests: 422 for class A substances, 20 for class B and 176 for class C.
Only last month the MoD confirmed that 17 soldiers from the 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) tested positive for drugs after a rest period in Cancun, Mexico.
The Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former army officer, said the increased availability in society and improved testing accounted for some of the rise but so did the additional strain placed on soldiers. He said: "In the Army of my day operational tours come round say every two years, now they are going round every year. Whilst we came back with one or two dead and couple of wounded, as we saw from the [2nd Battalion, The Mercian Regiment] service the other day, they suffered nine dead and 50 wounded. This puts a stress and strain on people. They will alleviate that strain through the use of relaxants, whether alcohol, abhorrent behaviour or use of drugs. We need to recognise that there is tension relief going on and drugs are being used.
While the hardline policy on drugs had served the Army well, the study said, problems with recruitment and retention meant the MoD needed to be sure that its near-zero tolerance approach was the best choice. While most offenders are dishonourably discharged, there is some flexibility in "exceptional circumstances" when a first-time offender below the rank of corporal is caught using non-class-A drugs.
Fallout of the Iranian (Royal Navy) hostage drama earlier this year.
MPs attack navy over debacle in the Gulf
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffa ... 51,00.html
· Iran's capture of personnel a national embarrassment
· Decision to allow hostages to sell stories damaging
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday December 14, 2007
The Guardian
The capture of a group of Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines by Iran was a "national embarrassment" and a number of service personnel have been punished for it, a crossparty group of MPs say in a hard-hitting report today.
The incident in the northern Gulf last March, and the decision to allow the hostages to sell their stories after they had been released, was "deeply damaging to the reputation of the Royal Navy", the Commons defence committee says.
A report into the incident by Lt Gen Sir Rob Fulton, governor of Gibraltar, remains secret on the grounds that it contains sensitive information. It was shown to the MPs' committee.
"The decision not to publish the Fulton report has led some people to conclude that the whole thing was a whitewash," the committee says today. That was not the case, it adds. The Fulton report was "robust in identifying serious weaknesses: in intelligence, in communications, in doctrine and in training."
The MPs continue: "There was a lapse in operational focus in the front line, and a widespread failure of situational awareness." Though they say they accept Ministry of Defence evidence that lack of resources was not "the direct cause" of the incident, they say they are concerned the MoD's budgetary pressures might affect the outcome of plans to prevent any recurrence.
MoD lawyers decided there were insufficient grounds for a court martial and insufficient evidence to secure a conviction on a disciplinary charge. Instead, says the report, "administrative action has been taken against a number of service personnel across a wide spectrum of ranks".
Such action can include postponing or freezing promotion. The navy yesterday declined to say who had been punished.
The incident occurred on March 23 when eight sailors and seven Marines from the frigate HMS Cornwall were captured by Iranians while boarding a merchant vessel in shallow waters near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran. The Iranians claimed the Cornwall had entered their waters.
The Royal Navy crew gave themselves up to the crew of the two faster, more heavily armed Iranian boats. The naval personnel were praised by British defence officials at the time for not opening fire in what Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the first sea lord, described as "one bad day in our proud 400-year history".
The MPs say today that the incident provided "the spur to remedy major weaknesses". Though they heard evidence in private, they described their first meeting with senior naval officers as "deeply unsatisfactory", with the witnesses surprised by the nature of the questions.
The MPs' complaints led to "a significant change in attitude by the MoD".
The humiliation was compounded by the navy's decision, accepted by the MoD, to allow the sailors and marines to sell their stories to the media. That, the MPs say in today's report, was a serious mistake. Though they say Des Browne, the defence secretary, had accepted responsibility and apologised, "this should not absolve others from blame".
The navy pointed out last night that it had resumed shallow water patrols in the northern Gulf with the frigate HMS Argyle, and that it had introduced new procedures, tactics, and training.
MPs attack navy over debacle in the Gulf
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffa ... 51,00.html
· Iran's capture of personnel a national embarrassment
· Decision to allow hostages to sell stories damaging
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday December 14, 2007
The Guardian
The capture of a group of Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines by Iran was a "national embarrassment" and a number of service personnel have been punished for it, a crossparty group of MPs say in a hard-hitting report today.
The incident in the northern Gulf last March, and the decision to allow the hostages to sell their stories after they had been released, was "deeply damaging to the reputation of the Royal Navy", the Commons defence committee says.
A report into the incident by Lt Gen Sir Rob Fulton, governor of Gibraltar, remains secret on the grounds that it contains sensitive information. It was shown to the MPs' committee.
"The decision not to publish the Fulton report has led some people to conclude that the whole thing was a whitewash," the committee says today. That was not the case, it adds. The Fulton report was "robust in identifying serious weaknesses: in intelligence, in communications, in doctrine and in training."
The MPs continue: "There was a lapse in operational focus in the front line, and a widespread failure of situational awareness." Though they say they accept Ministry of Defence evidence that lack of resources was not "the direct cause" of the incident, they say they are concerned the MoD's budgetary pressures might affect the outcome of plans to prevent any recurrence.
MoD lawyers decided there were insufficient grounds for a court martial and insufficient evidence to secure a conviction on a disciplinary charge. Instead, says the report, "administrative action has been taken against a number of service personnel across a wide spectrum of ranks".
Such action can include postponing or freezing promotion. The navy yesterday declined to say who had been punished.
The incident occurred on March 23 when eight sailors and seven Marines from the frigate HMS Cornwall were captured by Iranians while boarding a merchant vessel in shallow waters near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran. The Iranians claimed the Cornwall had entered their waters.
The Royal Navy crew gave themselves up to the crew of the two faster, more heavily armed Iranian boats. The naval personnel were praised by British defence officials at the time for not opening fire in what Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the first sea lord, described as "one bad day in our proud 400-year history".
The MPs say today that the incident provided "the spur to remedy major weaknesses". Though they heard evidence in private, they described their first meeting with senior naval officers as "deeply unsatisfactory", with the witnesses surprised by the nature of the questions.
The MPs' complaints led to "a significant change in attitude by the MoD".
The humiliation was compounded by the navy's decision, accepted by the MoD, to allow the sailors and marines to sell their stories to the media. That, the MPs say in today's report, was a serious mistake. Though they say Des Browne, the defence secretary, had accepted responsibility and apologised, "this should not absolve others from blame".
The navy pointed out last night that it had resumed shallow water patrols in the northern Gulf with the frigate HMS Argyle, and that it had introduced new procedures, tactics, and training.
Gurkhas being sacked to deprive them of their dues (TOI)
My sources tell me that its not just the military but the entire public sector facing trouble with pay hikes and pensions.
TOI focussed story on Gurkhas alone, made it read like twas a targetted move by the Brown govt against the cheery fellas.
Correction:LONDON: British government is facing legal action over alleged plans to cut the pensions of Gurkhas by sacking them three years before they are due to leave the army.
The move, which means the Defence Ministry will avoid having to pay an ordinary Gurkha soldier more than 200,000 pounds, is to be challenged in the courts by the British Armed Forces Federation (BAFF).
The policy was introduced after the government was forced to increase the Gurkhas' pay and pensions to bring them on par with the rest of the army.
An official briefing document on the new pension scheme shows that 80 per cent to 85 per cent of Gurkhas will be discharged early, so missing the better payments, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
They will lose out not only on the immediate pension they would get after 18 years service but also on a lump sum departure payment of the equivalent of three years' pension.
Gurkhas have been put on the new army pension scheme, which applies to all other soldiers, after years of campaigning by their supporters. The full pension will be worth around 6,500 pounds a year for a rifleman, the basic Gurkha rank - plus the one-off departure payment.
My sources tell me that its not just the military but the entire public sector facing trouble with pay hikes and pensions.
TOI focussed story on Gurkhas alone, made it read like twas a targetted move by the Brown govt against the cheery fellas.
Last edited by vsudhir on 17 Dec 2007 01:25, edited 1 time in total.
I look forward to servicemen (of all regiments) getting their just dues and the Queen and her little troop of inbred, pampered, privy-purse royals downsized with zero retainers, forced to work to make a living and put up in town council housing having 90% paki occupancy..and no fancy royal ear n nose
hospital just the regular run around from a NHS outfit.
afterall...a good king/queen is always "among their subjects" and "feels their pain"
hospital just the regular run around from a NHS outfit.
afterall...a good king/queen is always "among their subjects" and "feels their pain"
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Rudranathh
- BRFite
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- Joined: 17 Nov 2007 20:06
Churchill's great-grandson jailed in drugs racket
Thursday, December 20, 2007 22:11 [IST]
London: Former British prime minister Winston Churchill's great-grandson has been sentenced to a jail term of at least 20 months for his links in a drug racket in Australia.
Nicholas Jake Barton, Churchill's great-grandson, was sentenced in Australia to at least 20 months jail for involvement in a drug operation yesterday.
However, Barton will be eligible for early release to visit his dying mother in Britain. Judge Colin Charateris, who could have sent Barton to jail for up to 10 years, said his relationship to Sir Winston had not come in to consideration.
"In determining the appropriateness of this sentence, the fact the defendant is descended from a hero of the 20th century does not affect the sentence I must impose," Justice Charteris was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail newspaper today.
The court heard that Barton had sublet a property in the Sydney seaside suburb of Coogee to his co-accused, New Zealander Rees Woodgate in early June 2006.
The police found a black backpack containing 10 kg of ecstasy tables and 12 kg of MDMA, a powder used to make the drug in the building, the report said.
'Diana feared Charles was plotting to kill her'
Thursday, December 20, 2007 20:22 [IST]
London: Princess Diana in a letter written ten months after her separation from her husband expressed the fears that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her and marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the nanny of William and Harry.
The handwritten letter from Princess Diana claiming that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her was shown to her inquest.
In the note, sent to her butler Paul Burrell, Diana suggested that her husband was "planning an accident in my car". Diana also made the suggestion that Camilla Parker Bowles was just a "decoy" while Charles's real desire was to marry William and Harry's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the Daily Mail reported today.
A copy of the letter has previously been published, but the references to "my husband" and to Miss Legge-Bourke were blacked out. The uncensored version was revealed to the public after being read to the London hearing into the death of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed. It was sent in October 1993,ten months after Charles and Diana's separation was announced.
Handwritten in black pen, it reads: "I am sitting at my desk today longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing more than a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word," the daily quoted the Princess as saying in the letter that was shown to her inquest yesterday.
Tiggy Legge-Bourke is now 42-year-old Mrs Alexandra Pettifer and runs a bed-and-breakfast business near Abergavenny, South Wales.
Thursday, December 20, 2007 22:11 [IST]
London: Former British prime minister Winston Churchill's great-grandson has been sentenced to a jail term of at least 20 months for his links in a drug racket in Australia.
Nicholas Jake Barton, Churchill's great-grandson, was sentenced in Australia to at least 20 months jail for involvement in a drug operation yesterday.
However, Barton will be eligible for early release to visit his dying mother in Britain. Judge Colin Charateris, who could have sent Barton to jail for up to 10 years, said his relationship to Sir Winston had not come in to consideration.
"In determining the appropriateness of this sentence, the fact the defendant is descended from a hero of the 20th century does not affect the sentence I must impose," Justice Charteris was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail newspaper today.
The court heard that Barton had sublet a property in the Sydney seaside suburb of Coogee to his co-accused, New Zealander Rees Woodgate in early June 2006.
The police found a black backpack containing 10 kg of ecstasy tables and 12 kg of MDMA, a powder used to make the drug in the building, the report said.
'Diana feared Charles was plotting to kill her'
Thursday, December 20, 2007 20:22 [IST]
London: Princess Diana in a letter written ten months after her separation from her husband expressed the fears that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her and marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the nanny of William and Harry.
The handwritten letter from Princess Diana claiming that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her was shown to her inquest.
In the note, sent to her butler Paul Burrell, Diana suggested that her husband was "planning an accident in my car". Diana also made the suggestion that Camilla Parker Bowles was just a "decoy" while Charles's real desire was to marry William and Harry's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the Daily Mail reported today.
A copy of the letter has previously been published, but the references to "my husband" and to Miss Legge-Bourke were blacked out. The uncensored version was revealed to the public after being read to the London hearing into the death of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed. It was sent in October 1993,ten months after Charles and Diana's separation was announced.
Handwritten in black pen, it reads: "I am sitting at my desk today longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing more than a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word," the daily quoted the Princess as saying in the letter that was shown to her inquest yesterday.
Tiggy Legge-Bourke is now 42-year-old Mrs Alexandra Pettifer and runs a bed-and-breakfast business near Abergavenny, South Wales.
Tiny Blur was allegedly responsible for the cover-up of the BAe arms
scandal,according to UK media sources.
Blair called for BAE inquiry to be halted
Official memos released in court case (pdf)
Witness statement by head of Serious Fraud Office (pdf)
David Leigh and Rob Evans
Saturday December 22, 2007
The Guardian
Tony Blair's personal role as prime minister in halting the Saudi arms sale bribery investigation is revealed in court documents which the Guardian is publishing in full on its website.
Government memos stamped "Secret" reveal that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, twice tried in vain to stop Blair interfering in the criminal investigation.
His chief of staff told the cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, on October 3 2006: "The attorney general is of the firm view that, if the case is in fact soundly based, it would not be right to discontinue it."
Article continues
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This followed Saudi threats of "repercussions" if the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving the Saudi royals and the arms group BAE was allowed to proceed.
But Blair wrote a "Secret and Personal" letter to Goldsmith on December 8 2006, demanding he stop the investigation. He said he was concerned about the "critical difficulty" in negotiations over a new Typhoon fighter sales contract, as well as a "real and immediate risk of a collapse in UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic cooperation".
Blair said these were "extremely difficult and delicate issues" but he knew that constitutionally "any intervention you make ... must be your decision alone". Politicians normally have no right to interfere in a criminal case.
Goldsmith again attempted to resist. He saw Blair three days later and said, according to the official minute, that "while he could see the force of [Blair's] points ... he was concerned that halting the investigation would send a bad message about the credibility of the law in this area, and look like giving in to threats."
Blair told him "higher considerations were at stake". He also personally vetoed a proposal that BAE could plead guilty to lesser corruption charges, saying this would "be unlikely to reduce the offence caused to the Saudi royal family".
The partly sanitised documents emerged yesterday during preliminary hearings of a judicial review brought against the government by anti-corruption campaigner The Cornerhouse.
Special report
Britain's military
Guardian investigation into BAE systems
27.11.2003: Millions risked on BAE contract
13.10.2003: MoD chief in fraud cover-up row
15.09.2003: Homes for executive's mistress 'bought from BAE fund'
13.09.2003: Diplomat linked to BAE slush fund claims
12.09.2003: Fraud Office looks again at BAE
11.09.2003: BAE accused of arms deal slush fund
11.09.2003: BAE denies existence of £20m slush fund
30.06.2003: BAE 'paid millions' to win Hawk jets contract
14.06.2003: BAE faces corruption claims around world
13.06.2003: Web of state corruption dates back 40 years
12.06.2003: Politicians' claims put BAE in firing line
12.06.2003: US accuses British over arms deal bribery bid
Useful links
Ministry of Defence
BAE Systems
Thales
Advertiser links
Diet Pill with Ephedrine HCL
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Financial Advice - ExpatFinanceDirect
Independent offshore savings, investment, pension and...
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First-Time Buyer or Remortgaging?
Search every UK lender to find the mortgage you are looking...
mortgagemover.org.uk
HDTV | ISA | Medical Insurance | Football | Home Insurance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Printable version | Send it to a friend | Clip
...
Watch the video
Prince Bandar on whether there is corruption in deals with the Saudi royal family.
Watch all the videos
Global investigations map
An interactive guide to some of BAE's arms sales.
BAE's position
BAE and its executives have always denied any wrongdoing or illegality. Read more ...
More from the BAE files
The BAE files homepage
Read the documents
Cast of characters
What BAE sells
Who are David Leigh and Rob Evans?
The secrets of Britain's arms trade
Part 1: Healey's machine
Part 2: The Ray Brown years
Part 3: The Iranian deals
Part 4: The unlovable Saudis
Part 5: BAE in Saudi Arabia
Part 6: Secrets of al-Yamamah
Part 7: Britain blocks reform
Part 8: BAE's secret money machine
Part 9: Nobbling the police
Part 10: The web widens
scandal,according to UK media sources.
Blair called for BAE inquiry to be halted
Official memos released in court case (pdf)
Witness statement by head of Serious Fraud Office (pdf)
David Leigh and Rob Evans
Saturday December 22, 2007
The Guardian
Tony Blair's personal role as prime minister in halting the Saudi arms sale bribery investigation is revealed in court documents which the Guardian is publishing in full on its website.
Government memos stamped "Secret" reveal that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, twice tried in vain to stop Blair interfering in the criminal investigation.
His chief of staff told the cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, on October 3 2006: "The attorney general is of the firm view that, if the case is in fact soundly based, it would not be right to discontinue it."
Article continues
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This followed Saudi threats of "repercussions" if the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving the Saudi royals and the arms group BAE was allowed to proceed.
But Blair wrote a "Secret and Personal" letter to Goldsmith on December 8 2006, demanding he stop the investigation. He said he was concerned about the "critical difficulty" in negotiations over a new Typhoon fighter sales contract, as well as a "real and immediate risk of a collapse in UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic cooperation".
Blair said these were "extremely difficult and delicate issues" but he knew that constitutionally "any intervention you make ... must be your decision alone". Politicians normally have no right to interfere in a criminal case.
Goldsmith again attempted to resist. He saw Blair three days later and said, according to the official minute, that "while he could see the force of [Blair's] points ... he was concerned that halting the investigation would send a bad message about the credibility of the law in this area, and look like giving in to threats."
Blair told him "higher considerations were at stake". He also personally vetoed a proposal that BAE could plead guilty to lesser corruption charges, saying this would "be unlikely to reduce the offence caused to the Saudi royal family".
The partly sanitised documents emerged yesterday during preliminary hearings of a judicial review brought against the government by anti-corruption campaigner The Cornerhouse.
Special report
Britain's military
Guardian investigation into BAE systems
27.11.2003: Millions risked on BAE contract
13.10.2003: MoD chief in fraud cover-up row
15.09.2003: Homes for executive's mistress 'bought from BAE fund'
13.09.2003: Diplomat linked to BAE slush fund claims
12.09.2003: Fraud Office looks again at BAE
11.09.2003: BAE accused of arms deal slush fund
11.09.2003: BAE denies existence of £20m slush fund
30.06.2003: BAE 'paid millions' to win Hawk jets contract
14.06.2003: BAE faces corruption claims around world
13.06.2003: Web of state corruption dates back 40 years
12.06.2003: Politicians' claims put BAE in firing line
12.06.2003: US accuses British over arms deal bribery bid
Useful links
Ministry of Defence
BAE Systems
Thales
Advertiser links
Diet Pill with Ephedrine HCL
Fast weight loss with ephedrine Diet pill. Pharmaceutical...
astronutrition.com
Financial Advice - ExpatFinanceDirect
Independent offshore savings, investment, pension and...
medibroker.com
First-Time Buyer or Remortgaging?
Search every UK lender to find the mortgage you are looking...
mortgagemover.org.uk
HDTV | ISA | Medical Insurance | Football | Home Insurance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Printable version | Send it to a friend | Clip
...
Watch the video
Prince Bandar on whether there is corruption in deals with the Saudi royal family.
Watch all the videos
Global investigations map
An interactive guide to some of BAE's arms sales.
BAE's position
BAE and its executives have always denied any wrongdoing or illegality. Read more ...
More from the BAE files
The BAE files homepage
Read the documents
Cast of characters
What BAE sells
Who are David Leigh and Rob Evans?
The secrets of Britain's arms trade
Part 1: Healey's machine
Part 2: The Ray Brown years
Part 3: The Iranian deals
Part 4: The unlovable Saudis
Part 5: BAE in Saudi Arabia
Part 6: Secrets of al-Yamamah
Part 7: Britain blocks reform
Part 8: BAE's secret money machine
Part 9: Nobbling the police
Part 10: The web widens
BBC: Tony Blair Converts to Catholicism
Heh, given his role in the Kosovo war, I'm not surprised to see this stooge converting to Atlanticism's patron theology. I think he's looking for some born-again redemption to gain some supporters. That might be hard to do, given his key role as Bush's trans-Atlantic poodle.
Heh, given his role in the Kosovo war, I'm not surprised to see this stooge converting to Atlanticism's patron theology. I think he's looking for some born-again redemption to gain some supporters. That might be hard to do, given his key role as Bush's trans-Atlantic poodle.
Haha, I'm sure the Atlanticists would love to undo Henry-VIII's legacy, and get the Brits back under their control. The better to 'harmonize' Europe, and keep them all one happy, tightly-controlled family.There has never been a Roman Catholic prime minister of Britain, although there is no constitutional barrier to such a move.
However, it had in the past been suggested that Mr Blair would wait until after leaving office, to avoid possible clashes such as over his role in appointing Church of England bishops.
Catherine Pepinster, editor of Catholic magazine The Tablet, said the news was not quite the same as if Mr Blair had changed Churches while still prime minister.
"I understand that one of the issues he was concerned with, because he was so closely involved in negotiations over peace in Northern Ireland, that perhaps some people there might have been uncomfortable with the prime minister converting to Catholicism at such a time.
...
And earlier this year, he told the BBC that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for fear of being labelled "a nutter".
From CNN
Blair converts to Catholicism
Blair converts to Catholicism
Britons often are surprised by people who openly and fervently discuss their religious views, and the degree to which faiths such as evangelicalism can influence U.S. politics.
Historian of monarchy assails Queen Elizabeth
described her as poorly educated and intellectually limited
Meanwhile in the Islamic Emirate of England, held-Wales, Occupied-Scotland and English-Administered-Ireland....
Mohammed to overtake Jack as favourite name
Mohammed to overtake Jack as favourite name
While 6,772 boys were called Jack, 6,387 were called Mohammed or a variant.
An analysis by the Daily Telegraph of the names, compiled each year by the Office for National Statistics, shows there were 3,009 babies called Mohammed, the most popular spelling; 1,595 Muhammads, 903 Mohammads, 429 Muhammeds, 349 Mohameds, 39 Mohamads, 12 Muhameds, 11 Mohammods, nine Mohmmeds, eight Mohamuds, seven Mahammeds, six Muhammeets, five Mohmmads and five Muhammods.
Gerard wrote:Blair, the Muslim?
I'm not sure I saw any sarc tags anywhere. Mebbe the tablighi writing this piece was being serious after all....
vsudhir, you can bet that this TJ is serious about what he wrote, and what's more, most of his co-religionists and dhimmis would read it and agree too.
Look at this one -- this is a beaut by this islamist Ajmal Masroor:
Completely denying Islam's treatment of women and the rampant female and child abuse in Islam, this guy speaks of the celibacy of priests in christianity and how that leads to homosexuality!! Clearly, another class topper in courses in Advanced Rhetoric in madrassas (and yes, they still teach rhetoric in madrassas).
Look at this one -- this is a beaut by this islamist Ajmal Masroor:
That is what political correctness does to the brain. This islamist expertly turns blairs own words against Christianity while lying about Islam.Blair was very clear in his words when he said Islam "is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance".
Completely denying Islam's treatment of women and the rampant female and child abuse in Islam, this guy speaks of the celibacy of priests in christianity and how that leads to homosexuality!! Clearly, another class topper in courses in Advanced Rhetoric in madrassas (and yes, they still teach rhetoric in madrassas).
If Islam is a religion that values family and respects women why has he converted to a church that prohibits its priests from getting married, whose holy man are dogged by accusations of homosexuality and paedophilia?
Last edited by Rye on 26 Dec 2007 21:53, edited 1 time in total.
-
JwalaMukhi
- BRFite
- Posts: 1635
- Joined: 28 Mar 2007 18:27
Those of us who think Brits are better than US, friendlier to Indian here is the link
http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/holes ... nce-3.html
TIme frame this editor is talking about refers to Tony Blair.
I suggest we go with F-18/f.
http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/holes ... nce-3.html
TIme frame this editor is talking about refers to Tony Blair.
I suggest we go with F-18/f.
-
Rudranathh
- BRFite
- Posts: 223
- Joined: 17 Nov 2007 20:06
British MPs concerned over government's plan to fund Muslim schools
2 Jan 2008
2 Jan 2008
London, Jan 2 (ANI): Ed Ballas, UK's Cabinet minister for Children, Schools and Families, will face a grilling by senior MPs next week over his plans to pump millions of taxpayers' cash into 100 Muslim schools.
Some members are concerned that extending state funding to dozens of Muslim schools will further damage community cohesion and may breed social separation.
The Commons Education Committee will investigate the Government's proposed expansion of faith schools.
Balls is expected to come under intense questioning, The Daily Express reported.
Labour MP Barry Sheerman, the committee chairman, said: "I am getting reports from people in local government who find it difficult to know what is going on in some faith schools, particularly Muslim schools.
"There is real concern in local government about its ability to find out how well an important part of our community is being served by its education provision," he added.
"Will we find out that young people in certain kinds of faith school, and particularly young women, are not getting the provision or education that they deserve," he asked.
"Faith schools are an important area of concern. This is something the Government should look at in a focused way, rather than drifting into the proliferation of faith education," Sheerman said. (ANI)
-
Rudranathh
- BRFite
- Posts: 223
- Joined: 17 Nov 2007 20:06
Brit snaps UFO hovering over South-west England
1 Jan 2008
London, January 1 (ANI): A saucer-shaped flying object, believed to be a spaceship, has been photographed over Cornwall in South-west England.
Kelvin Barbery, a facilities manager for schools, clicked the picture of the mystery object from a coastal path between Swanpool and Maenporth, near Falmouth.
He revealed that he did not even see the UFO at the time of clicking the picture, as he was just trying to click a sea view.
However, upon loading the digital camera card on to his computer, he was stunned to find the round metallic "craft" at the centre of the shot.
The flying object appears in the middle of two ships in the picture. It is believed that the so-called UFO would have been about two miles away from Kelvin.
"There were a couple of tankers out in the bay and I thought that it made a nice shot. There was nothing in view and certainly no fault on the camera," the Sun quoted Kelvin as saying.
"When I got home I couldn't believe what I had. I thought, 'Wow, where did that come from?' I'm not the sort to believe in UFOs - now I'm not so sure," he said.
Nick Pope, a renowned UFO expert in Britain, has hailed the photograph.
"If I was still there I'd be looking at this very closely. The object looks structured, symmetrical and metallic. This man has caught something very interesting indeed," said Nick, formerly the official Ministry of Defence UFO analyst.
Michael Soper, an expert with the Contact International UFO group, said that though tampering with digital pictures was very easy, Kelvin's photo looked genuine.
"This does appear genuine. Digital photos can be doctored but everything about it appears consistent," he said. (ANI)
*****************
Looks like Hitler is making plans to come back from his cold place.
1 Jan 2008
London, January 1 (ANI): A saucer-shaped flying object, believed to be a spaceship, has been photographed over Cornwall in South-west England.
Kelvin Barbery, a facilities manager for schools, clicked the picture of the mystery object from a coastal path between Swanpool and Maenporth, near Falmouth.
He revealed that he did not even see the UFO at the time of clicking the picture, as he was just trying to click a sea view.
However, upon loading the digital camera card on to his computer, he was stunned to find the round metallic "craft" at the centre of the shot.
The flying object appears in the middle of two ships in the picture. It is believed that the so-called UFO would have been about two miles away from Kelvin.
"There were a couple of tankers out in the bay and I thought that it made a nice shot. There was nothing in view and certainly no fault on the camera," the Sun quoted Kelvin as saying.
"When I got home I couldn't believe what I had. I thought, 'Wow, where did that come from?' I'm not the sort to believe in UFOs - now I'm not so sure," he said.
Nick Pope, a renowned UFO expert in Britain, has hailed the photograph.
"If I was still there I'd be looking at this very closely. The object looks structured, symmetrical and metallic. This man has caught something very interesting indeed," said Nick, formerly the official Ministry of Defence UFO analyst.
Michael Soper, an expert with the Contact International UFO group, said that though tampering with digital pictures was very easy, Kelvin's photo looked genuine.
"This does appear genuine. Digital photos can be doctored but everything about it appears consistent," he said. (ANI)
*****************
Looks like Hitler is making plans to come back from his cold place.
GM Fraser and Flashman, RIP.I enjoyed the novels thoroughly and cannot disagree with much of the author's comments on Britain today.Knowing the country quite intimately for two decads now,there is much to admire but also much to regret,the way in which once derided "Victorian values" have been swept away by a tide of EC meddling,a flood of immigration with another flood of English escaping to Spain and warmer climes, and PC,as political correctness is termed.Add to that some insensitiveness to the views of local communities in far off habitats,with central decisions affecting their way of life for centuries and you have a recipe for disaster.
I remember almost 20 years ago,a hideous new road bridge was being built at phenomenal cost linking the romantic and historic island of Skye (famous for the Talisker malt whisky distillery which took me there in the first place,a great favourite!) in the Western Inner Hebrides to the Scottish mainland,one of the most beautiful places on our planet.Enjoying a large double dram of Talisker ,nicknamed the "Lava of the Cuilins" for its ferocious character,aboard the Cal-Mac ferry from Mallaig approaching from the south while watching an afternoon autumn rainbow kiss the sea was paradise on earth.The distance between the isalnd and the mainland at the northern tip is so small,like the Mandovi river at Panjim, that you thought that a stone could be thrown from one side to the other and quaint smaller ferries saw to the transportation needs of the population and their vehicles.I still have the newspaper article somewhere expressing the indigantion of the islanders of Skye at the outrage of the bridge,as almost everyone in Britain knows how one of the the most celebrated Scottish heroes,"Bonnie Prince Charlie",escaped the English forces after the battle of Culloden by fleeing in a little boat across the waters to Skye.The "Skye Boat Song" is one of the most haunting and favourite songs of the British isles (mine included) and epitomises the fierce pride and independence of the Scottish race.The bridge on the other hand,apart fron being a visual disater,built at great cost,was destroying the character of the island and was felt to be a kind of vengeance being rammed down Scottish throats, as subsequently,the ferries would cease operations ending one's visiting Skye by boat and the memeories of Scotland's heroic prince.The islanders also didn't want the bridge because it brought with it a heavy toll,adding insult to injury.
The unpopularity of the English was found to be almost universal across Scotland.Scots look at themselves at being closer to France,Scandinavia and Europe.Edinburgh,is architecturally more European in charcter than English.Two decades on,we find the SNP in power and Alex Salmond on the path of becoming the future PM of an independent Scotland ,which will undoubtedly happen.It is time for India to establish even closer ties with the Scots ,a wonderful people full of vitality and life,with their clans like our Rajputs and the heartiness of the Punjabi.Read on why this happy evevnt will take place in the future.
The break-up of the union now appears inevitable
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... 75,00.html
With nationalism on the rise in every corner, 2008 will see the UK stretched to breaking point. Yet still Westminster is oblivious
Iain Macwhirter
Thursday January 10, 2008
The Guardian
Gordon Brown's acknowledgment on Tuesday that 2008 will be "an important year for the union" was an understatement. It will be crucial. Who could have forecast 12 months ago that Britain would be starting 2008 with nationalist parties in power, or sharing it, in all three devolved administrations? Last year was supposed to have been a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union. In fact it was about dismantling it: the SNP is now running Holyrood; Plaid Cymru is in coalition with Labour in Cardiff; and the nationalist Sinn Féin shares power with the DUP in Stormont. It is the unionist nightmare come true: a separatist clean sweep.
The rise of provincial nationalism was by far the most significant political development in Britain in the last year - far more important than the election-that-never-was, or the change of personnel at No 10. Brown is intending to pursue largely the same political and social agenda as his predecessor, but he will soon discover that large parts of the UK are now resistant to it.
Already, Scotland has a range of distinctive social policies - free personal care, free higher education, free prescriptions - some of which have aroused resentment in the south. But this is only the start. In 2008 the nationalist first minister, Alex Salmond, intends to scrap the council tax and replace it with a local income tax - a move that will cause disquiet among English pensioners. Salmond has the powers and the votes to do it, and has already frozen council tax in Scotland.
The Scottish government has also served notice that it intends to repatriate powers to Holyrood over firearms - primarily in order to ban air weapons - and also over immigration and broadcasting. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has said no, but that is unlikely to stop Salmond, who also intends to challenge Brown's cherished policy of public private partnerships.
Salmond intends to step up demands for a share of North Sea oil revenues, while, to top it all, the Scottish government has made it emphatically clear that it will have nothing to do with a new generation of nuclear power stations, expected to be announced today.
The first minister is an inspired opportunist who has discovered that even a minority administration can achieve a great deal within and without the terms of the Scotland Act.
Westminster has yet to come to terms with it, but legislative dissonance is likely to become one of the defining features of UK politics. The pace of policy differentiation is increasing dramatically as the subordinate legislatures begin to feel their strength. They are now feeding off each other, and joining in tactical alliances. In 2007 the Scottish government joined with Stormont to call for powers to vary the rate of corporation tax. Northern Ireland wants to cut business taxes, to compete with the Irish Republic; Scotland is saying, "me too".
The Scottish parliament has borrowed the policy of free prescription charges from the Welsh assembly. Meanwhile Cardiff has used Holyrood as a template on which to model its own demands for primary legislative powers. This is a relentless process which will lead inexorably to power draining to the peripheral governments of the UK. "Permanent devolution", as Trotsky might have said.
Whisper it, but Labour in Scotland is now closer to the SNP than it is to Brown. Wendy Alexander, the Scottish Labour leader, has defied her own prime minister by declaring that devolution is "a process, not an event", and that the Scottish parliament needs to have greater powers. Brown had told Scots at the launch of Labour's Scottish election campaign that more powers were not on the cards for Holyrood.
The PM told the House of Commons in December that people in Scotland had to recognise that devolution was not the same as federalism. But the way things are going, federalism looks like the least worst option for Westminster.
In another significant development in 2007, the Conservative leader David Cameron endorsed the plan for an English grand committee in Westminster, composed of English MPs. The idea is that this body would handle England-only bills under the rubric "English votes for English laws". But it would rapidly evolve into a de facto English parliament. If such a body is set up - perhaps after a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats, who also support an English Parliament - federalism is inevitable.
There is unstoppable momentum now behind the disaggregation of the UK, and time is running out for the political establishment in Westminster to respond. This country is changing - and, it has to be said, largely for the better, as the old centralised apparatus disintegrates before regional democracy. Now that the unionist parties in Scotland have all but given up, the UK faces a choice: adopt some form of federal solution, or prepare for political disintegration, on the lines of Czechoslovakia's "velvet divorce" in 1993. It is as serious as that. While Brown launches fatuous "Britishness" campaigns, the very fabric of the country he claims to love is being torn up and stitched anew.
· Iain Macwhirter is a political commentator for the Sunday Herald
[email protected]
Comments
redsquare
January 10, 2008 1:10 AM
I believe it is dreadfully sad that the union be rent asunder but however better that Scotland, England, Wales and Northern ireland have proper parliaments with revenue raising powers so that the people of each country can rule themselves, rather than the bitterness and resentment generated by the disaster of the Nulab experiment.
will Scotland chose the Euro, Sterling or the Scottish pound. Will it be a Celtic Tiger or a Soviet Satellite Synonym as it is now?
A time apart might usefully remind the constituents of the UK of the benefits of collaboration.
Strongman
January 10, 2008 1:30 AM
If Scotland goes it alone, we just have to look at ourselves and see what we're becoming: an intolerant nation of overworked drunkards, allowing our government to Thatcherise what remains of our already-Thatcherised country.
When our government can extend US empire by piggybacking along with energy wars, without so much as a squeal from the populace that pays for indefinite occupations, we know there's a problem. How much for Trident? ID cards? This is becoming more Orwellian by the day and I don't blame the Scots.
http://rebelresource.wordpress.com/
I remember almost 20 years ago,a hideous new road bridge was being built at phenomenal cost linking the romantic and historic island of Skye (famous for the Talisker malt whisky distillery which took me there in the first place,a great favourite!) in the Western Inner Hebrides to the Scottish mainland,one of the most beautiful places on our planet.Enjoying a large double dram of Talisker ,nicknamed the "Lava of the Cuilins" for its ferocious character,aboard the Cal-Mac ferry from Mallaig approaching from the south while watching an afternoon autumn rainbow kiss the sea was paradise on earth.The distance between the isalnd and the mainland at the northern tip is so small,like the Mandovi river at Panjim, that you thought that a stone could be thrown from one side to the other and quaint smaller ferries saw to the transportation needs of the population and their vehicles.I still have the newspaper article somewhere expressing the indigantion of the islanders of Skye at the outrage of the bridge,as almost everyone in Britain knows how one of the the most celebrated Scottish heroes,"Bonnie Prince Charlie",escaped the English forces after the battle of Culloden by fleeing in a little boat across the waters to Skye.The "Skye Boat Song" is one of the most haunting and favourite songs of the British isles (mine included) and epitomises the fierce pride and independence of the Scottish race.The bridge on the other hand,apart fron being a visual disater,built at great cost,was destroying the character of the island and was felt to be a kind of vengeance being rammed down Scottish throats, as subsequently,the ferries would cease operations ending one's visiting Skye by boat and the memeories of Scotland's heroic prince.The islanders also didn't want the bridge because it brought with it a heavy toll,adding insult to injury.
The unpopularity of the English was found to be almost universal across Scotland.Scots look at themselves at being closer to France,Scandinavia and Europe.Edinburgh,is architecturally more European in charcter than English.Two decades on,we find the SNP in power and Alex Salmond on the path of becoming the future PM of an independent Scotland ,which will undoubtedly happen.It is time for India to establish even closer ties with the Scots ,a wonderful people full of vitality and life,with their clans like our Rajputs and the heartiness of the Punjabi.Read on why this happy evevnt will take place in the future.
The break-up of the union now appears inevitable
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... 75,00.html
With nationalism on the rise in every corner, 2008 will see the UK stretched to breaking point. Yet still Westminster is oblivious
Iain Macwhirter
Thursday January 10, 2008
The Guardian
Gordon Brown's acknowledgment on Tuesday that 2008 will be "an important year for the union" was an understatement. It will be crucial. Who could have forecast 12 months ago that Britain would be starting 2008 with nationalist parties in power, or sharing it, in all three devolved administrations? Last year was supposed to have been a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union. In fact it was about dismantling it: the SNP is now running Holyrood; Plaid Cymru is in coalition with Labour in Cardiff; and the nationalist Sinn Féin shares power with the DUP in Stormont. It is the unionist nightmare come true: a separatist clean sweep.
The rise of provincial nationalism was by far the most significant political development in Britain in the last year - far more important than the election-that-never-was, or the change of personnel at No 10. Brown is intending to pursue largely the same political and social agenda as his predecessor, but he will soon discover that large parts of the UK are now resistant to it.
Already, Scotland has a range of distinctive social policies - free personal care, free higher education, free prescriptions - some of which have aroused resentment in the south. But this is only the start. In 2008 the nationalist first minister, Alex Salmond, intends to scrap the council tax and replace it with a local income tax - a move that will cause disquiet among English pensioners. Salmond has the powers and the votes to do it, and has already frozen council tax in Scotland.
The Scottish government has also served notice that it intends to repatriate powers to Holyrood over firearms - primarily in order to ban air weapons - and also over immigration and broadcasting. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has said no, but that is unlikely to stop Salmond, who also intends to challenge Brown's cherished policy of public private partnerships.
Salmond intends to step up demands for a share of North Sea oil revenues, while, to top it all, the Scottish government has made it emphatically clear that it will have nothing to do with a new generation of nuclear power stations, expected to be announced today.
The first minister is an inspired opportunist who has discovered that even a minority administration can achieve a great deal within and without the terms of the Scotland Act.
Westminster has yet to come to terms with it, but legislative dissonance is likely to become one of the defining features of UK politics. The pace of policy differentiation is increasing dramatically as the subordinate legislatures begin to feel their strength. They are now feeding off each other, and joining in tactical alliances. In 2007 the Scottish government joined with Stormont to call for powers to vary the rate of corporation tax. Northern Ireland wants to cut business taxes, to compete with the Irish Republic; Scotland is saying, "me too".
The Scottish parliament has borrowed the policy of free prescription charges from the Welsh assembly. Meanwhile Cardiff has used Holyrood as a template on which to model its own demands for primary legislative powers. This is a relentless process which will lead inexorably to power draining to the peripheral governments of the UK. "Permanent devolution", as Trotsky might have said.
Whisper it, but Labour in Scotland is now closer to the SNP than it is to Brown. Wendy Alexander, the Scottish Labour leader, has defied her own prime minister by declaring that devolution is "a process, not an event", and that the Scottish parliament needs to have greater powers. Brown had told Scots at the launch of Labour's Scottish election campaign that more powers were not on the cards for Holyrood.
The PM told the House of Commons in December that people in Scotland had to recognise that devolution was not the same as federalism. But the way things are going, federalism looks like the least worst option for Westminster.
In another significant development in 2007, the Conservative leader David Cameron endorsed the plan for an English grand committee in Westminster, composed of English MPs. The idea is that this body would handle England-only bills under the rubric "English votes for English laws". But it would rapidly evolve into a de facto English parliament. If such a body is set up - perhaps after a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats, who also support an English Parliament - federalism is inevitable.
There is unstoppable momentum now behind the disaggregation of the UK, and time is running out for the political establishment in Westminster to respond. This country is changing - and, it has to be said, largely for the better, as the old centralised apparatus disintegrates before regional democracy. Now that the unionist parties in Scotland have all but given up, the UK faces a choice: adopt some form of federal solution, or prepare for political disintegration, on the lines of Czechoslovakia's "velvet divorce" in 1993. It is as serious as that. While Brown launches fatuous "Britishness" campaigns, the very fabric of the country he claims to love is being torn up and stitched anew.
· Iain Macwhirter is a political commentator for the Sunday Herald
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Comments
redsquare
January 10, 2008 1:10 AM
I believe it is dreadfully sad that the union be rent asunder but however better that Scotland, England, Wales and Northern ireland have proper parliaments with revenue raising powers so that the people of each country can rule themselves, rather than the bitterness and resentment generated by the disaster of the Nulab experiment.
will Scotland chose the Euro, Sterling or the Scottish pound. Will it be a Celtic Tiger or a Soviet Satellite Synonym as it is now?
A time apart might usefully remind the constituents of the UK of the benefits of collaboration.
Strongman
January 10, 2008 1:30 AM
If Scotland goes it alone, we just have to look at ourselves and see what we're becoming: an intolerant nation of overworked drunkards, allowing our government to Thatcherise what remains of our already-Thatcherised country.
When our government can extend US empire by piggybacking along with energy wars, without so much as a squeal from the populace that pays for indefinite occupations, we know there's a problem. How much for Trident? ID cards? This is becoming more Orwellian by the day and I don't blame the Scots.
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