India, Old and New | Page 2

to the proprietors of The Times for
allowing me to use some of the letters which I wrote for that paper
whilst I was in India last winter, and also to the Royal Society of Arts
for permission to reproduce the main portions of a lecture delivered by
me last year on Hinduism as the first of the Memorial Lectures
instituted in honour of the late Sir George Birdwood, to whom I owe as
much for the deeper understanding which he gave me of old India as I
do to the late Mr. G.K. Gokhale for the clearer insight I gained from
him into the spirit of new India whilst we were colleagues from 1912 to
1915 on the Royal Commission on Indian Public Services.
VALENTINE CHIROL.
34 CARLYLE SQUARE, CHELSEA, _August 24, 1921._

CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE CLASH OF TWO CIVILISATIONS 1

CHAPTER II
THE ENDURING POWER OF HINDUISM 15

CHAPTER III
MAHOMEDAN DOMINATION 46

CHAPTER IV
BRITISH RULE UNDER THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 66

CHAPTER V
THE MUTINY AND FIFTY YEARS AFTER 84

CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST GREAT WAVE OF UNREST 111

CHAPTER VII
THE MORLEY-MINTO REFORMS 125

CHAPTER VIII
THROUGH THE GREAT WAR TO THE GREAT INDIAN REFORM
BILL 139

CHAPTER IX
THE EMERGENCE OF MR. GANDHI 165

CHAPTER X
SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE ELECTIONS 193

CHAPTER XI
CROSS CURRENTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA 214

CHAPTER XII
THE BIRTH OF AN INDIAN PARLIAMENT 227

CHAPTER XIII
ECONOMIC FACTORS 246

CHAPTER XIV
SHOALS AND ROCKS AHEAD 268

CHAPTER XV
THE INCLINED PLANE OF GANDHIISM 286

CHAPTER XVI
THE INDIAN PROBLEM A WORLD PROBLEM 299
INDEX 311

CHAPTER I
THE CLASH OF TWO CIVILISATIONS
On February 9, 1921, three hundred and twenty-one years after Queen
Elizabeth granted to her trusty "Merchant-venturers" of London the
charter out of which the East India Company and the British Empire of
India were to grow up, His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught
inaugurated at Delhi, in the King-Emperor's name, the new
representative institutions that are to lead India onward towards

complete self-government as an equal partner in the British
Commonwealth of Nations. To bring home to every Indian the full
significance of the occasion, the King-Emperor did not shrink from
using in his Royal Message an Indian word which not long ago was
held to bear no other than a seditious construction. His Majesty gave it
a new and finer meaning. "For years--it may be for
generations--patriotic and loyal Indians have dreamed of Swaraj for
their motherland. To-day you have the beginnings of Swaraj within my
Empire, and the widest scope and ample opportunity for progress to the
liberty which my other Dominions enjoy."
It was a bold pronouncement inaugurating another, some say the
boldest, of all the many bold adventures which make up the marvellous
history of British rule in India. The simplicity, rare in the East, of the
ceremony itself enhanced its significance. It was not held, like the
opening of the Chamber of Princes, in the splendid Hall of Public
Audience in the old Fort where the Moghul Emperors once sat on the
Peacock Throne, nor were there the flash of jewels and blaze of colour
that faced the Duke when he addressed the feudatory chiefs who still
rule their states on ancient lines beyond the limits of direct British
administration. The members of the new Indian Legislatures, most of
them in sober European attire, though many of them retained their own
distinctive head-dress, were assembled within the white and unadorned
walls of the temporary building in which they will continue to sit until
the statelier home to be built for them in new Delhi is ready to receive
them. But Delhi itself with all its age-long memories was around one to
provide the historic setting for an historic scene, and Delhi still stands
under the sign of the Kutub Minar, the splendid minaret--a landmark
for miles and miles around--which dominates the vast graveyard of
fallen dynasties at its feet and the whole of the great plain beyond
where the fate of India, and not of India alone, has so often been
decided.
On that plain were fought out, in prehistoric times, the fierce conflicts
of ancient Aryan races, Pandavas and Kauravas, around which the
poetic genius of India has woven the wonderful epos of the
Mahabharata. Only a couple of miles south of the modern city, the

walls of the Purana Kilat, the fortress built by Humayun, cover the site
but have not obliterated the ancient name of Indraprasthra, or Indrapat,
the city founded by the Pandavas themselves, when Yudhisthira
celebrated their final victory by performing on the banks of the Jumna,
in token of the Pandava claim to Empire, the Asvamedha, or great
Horse Sacrifice, originated by