India, Old and New | Page 2

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 Brahma himself. There too, on a mound beyond Indrapat, stands the granite shaft of one of Asoka's pillars, on which, with a fine faith that the world has never yet justified, the great Buddhist Apostle-Emperor of India inscribed over 2000 years ago his edicts prohibiting the taking of life. At the very foot of the Kutub Minar the famous Iron Pillar commemorates the victories of the "Sun of Power," the Hindu Emperor of