Indian Unrest | Page 6

must reserve for subsequent discussion.
Some of them are economic, such as the remarkable rise in prices
during the last decade. This has seriously enhanced the cost of living in
India and has specially affected the very classes amongst whom
disaffection is most widespread. The clerk, the teacher, the petty
Government official, whose exiguous salaries have remained the same,
find themselves to-day relatively, and in many cases actually, worse off
than the artisan or even the labourer, whose wages have in many cases

risen in proportion to the increased cost of living. Plague, which in the
course of the last 14 years has carried off over 6,000,000 people, and
two terrible visitations of famine have caused in different parts of the
country untold misery and consequent bitterness. On the other hand, the
growth of commerce and industry and the growing interest taken by all
classes in commercial and industrial questions have led to a
corresponding resentment of the fiscal restraints placed upon India by
the Imperial Government for the selfish benefit, as it is contended, of
the British manufacturer and trader. Much bad blood has undoubtedly
been created by the treatment of British Indians in South Africa and the
attitude adopted in British Colonies generally towards Asiatic
immigrants. The social relations between the two races in India
itself--always a problem of infinite difficulty--have certainly not been
improved by the large influx of a lower class of Europeans which the
development of railways and telegraphs and other industries requiring
technical knowledge have brought in their train. Nor can it be denied
that the growing pressure of office work as well as the increased
facilities of home leave and frequent transfers from one post to another
have inevitably to some extent lessened the contact between the
Anglo-Indian official and the native population. Of more remote
influences which have indirectly reacted upon the Indian mind it may
suffice for the present to mention the South African War, which
lowered the prestige of our arms, and the Russo-Japanese War, which
was regarded as the first blow dealt to the ascendency of Europe over
Asia, though it may be worth noting that in his novel, "The Prince of
Destiny," Mr. Surat Kumar Ghosh lays repeated emphasis on the
impression produced in India some years earlier by the defeat of the
Italian forces in Abyssinia. Each of the above points has its own
importance and deserves to be closely studied, for upon the way in
which we shall in the future handle some of the delicate questions
which they raise will largely depend our failure or our success in
coping with Indian unrest--that is, in preventing its invasion of other
classes than those to which it has been hitherto confined. But the clue
to the real spirit which informs Indian unrest must be sought elsewhere.
Two misconceptions appear to prevail very widely at home with regard
to the nature of the unrest. The first is that disaffection of a virulent and

articulate character is a new phenomenon in India; the second is that
the existing: disaffection represents a genuine, if precocious and
misdirected, response on the part of the Western educated classes to the
democratic ideals of the modern Western world which our system of
education has imported into India. It is easy to account for the
prevalence of both these misconceptions. We are a people of
notoriously short memory, and, when a series of sensational dastardly
crimes, following on a tumultuous agitation in Bengal and a campaign
of incredible violence in the native Press, at last aroused and alarmed
the British public, the vast majority of Englishmen were under the
impression that since the black days of the Mutiny law and order had
never been seriously assailed in India, and they therefore rushed to the
conclusion that, if the pax Britannica had been so rudely and suddenly
shaken, the only possible explanation lay in some novel wave of
sentiment or some grievous administrative blunder which had abruptly
disturbed the harmonious relations between the rulers and the ruled.
People had forgotten that disaffection in varying forms and degrees of
intensity has existed at all times amongst certain sections of the
population, and under the conditions of our rule can hardly be expected
to disappear altogether. Whether British statesmanship has always
sufficiently reckoned with its existence is another question. More than
30 years ago, for instance, the Government of India had to pass a Bill
dealing with the aggressive violence of the vernacular Press on
precisely the same grounds that were alleged in support of this year's
Press Bill, and with scarcely less justification, whilst just 13 years ago
two British officials fell victims at Poona to a murderous conspiracy,
prompted by a campaign of criminal virulence in the Press, closely
resembling those which have more recently robbed India