India, Old and New | Page 4

India would such an alliance between Hindus and
Mahomedans have seemed only a few years ago more unthinkable. For
nowhere else have we such a vision as in Delhi of the ruthlessness as
well as of the splendour of Mahomedan domination in India. Nowhere
can one measure as in Delhi the greatness of its fall, and its fall had
begun before it ever came into conflict with the rising British power. It
had been shaken to its foundations by the far more ancient power of
Hinduism, which Islam had subdued but never destroyed. In the
seventeenth century Shivaji, the hero still to-day of the Hindu revival of
which Mr. Gandhi is the latest apostle, led out for the first time his
Mahrattas in open rebellion against Delhi and started the continuous
process of disintegration from which the Moghul Emperors were driven
to purchase their only possible respite under British protection. Since
India finally passed not under Mahratta, but under British rule,
Hinduism has never again been subjected to the oppression which the
fierce monotheism of Islam itself taught all her Mahomedan rulers,
with the one noble exception of Akbar, to inflict upon an "idolatrous"
race. British rule introduced into India not only a new reign of law and
order but the principles of equal tolerance and justice for all which had
struck root in our own civilisation. Nevertheless, at the very moment at
which we were attempting to extend a wide and generous application of
those principles to the domain of political rights and liberties, we were
being confronted with unexpected forces of resistance which, even in
Mahomedan Delhi, drew their chief inspiration from Hinduism.
But, it might be argued, Delhi, though restored to the primacy it had
lost under British rule as the capital city of India, has continued to live
on the memories of the past and has been scarcely touched by the
breath of modern civilisation. For the full effect of close contact with
the West, ought one not to look to the great cities that have grown up
under British rule--to Calcutta, for instance, the seat until a few years
ago of British Government in India, itself a creation of the British, and

if not to-day a more prosperous centre of European enterprise than
Bombay, a larger and more populous city, in which the Hindus are in
an overwhelming majority? But in the life even of Calcutta features are
not lacking to remind one how persistent are the forces of resistance to
the whole spirit of the West which Mr. Gandhi mustered in Delhi to
protest against the purpose of the Duke of Connaught's mission. Had
not a great part of Calcutta itself also observed the Hartal proclaimed
by Mr. Gandhi during the Prince's visit?
On the surface it seems difficult in Calcutta to get even an occasional
glimpse of the old India upon which we have superimposed a new India
with results that are still in the making. In Bombay, though it proudly
calls itself "the Western Gate of India" the glow of Hindu funeral pyres,
divided only by a long wall from the fashionable drive which sweeps
along Back Bay from the city, still called the Fort, to Malabar Hill,
serves to remind one any evening that he is in an oriental world still
largely governed as ever by the doctrine of successive rebirths, the dead
being merely reborn to fresh life, in some new form according to each
one's merits or demerits, out of the flames that consume the body. On
Malabar Hill itself, in the very heart of the favourite residential quarter
whence the Europeans are being rapidly elbowed out by Indian
merchant princes, the finest site of all still encloses the Towers of
Silence on which, contrary to the Hindu usage of cremation, the Parsees,
holding fire too sacred to be subjected to contact with mortal corruption,
expose their dead to be devoured by vultures. Calcutta has no such
conspicuous landmarks of the East to disturb the illusion produced by
most of one's surroundings that this is a city which, if not actually
European, differs only from the European type in the complexion and
dress of its oriental population and the architectural compromises
imposed on European buildings by a tropical climate. The Marquess of
Wellesley built Government House over a hundred years ago on the
model of Kedleston, and it is still the stateliest official residence in
British India. Fort William with Olive's ramparts and fosses is still
almost untouched, and with an ever-expanding Walhalla of bronze or
marble Governors and Viceroys and Commanders-in-Chief, and at the
farther end the white marble walls and domes of the Queen Victoria
Memorial Hall--the one noble monument we have built in India--at last

nearing completion, the broad expanse of Calcutta's incomparable
Maidan is, even more than