Indian Unrest | Page 8

its native servants in every branch of the
public service; it is amongst them also that are chiefly recruited the
liberal professions, the Press, the schoolmasters--in fact all those
agencies through which public opinion and the mind of the rising
generation are most easily moulded and directed. That it is amongst
them also that the spirit of revolt against British ascendency is chiefly
and almost exclusively rife constitutes the most ominous feature of
Indian unrest.

CHAPTER II.
SWARAJ ON THE PLATFORM AND IN THE PRESS.
Before proceeding to describe the methods by which Indian unrest has
been fomented, and to study as far as possible its psychology, it may be
well to set forth succinctly the political purpose to which it is directed,
as far as there is any unity of direction. One of the chief difficulties one
encounters in attempting to define its aims is the vagueness that
generally characterizes the pronouncements of Indian politicians. There
is, indeed, one section that makes no disguise either of its aspirations or
of the way in which it proposes to secure their fulfilment. Its doctrines
are frankly revolutionary, and it openly preaches propaganda by
deed--i.e., by armed revolt, if and when it becomes practicable, and, in
the meantime, by assassination, dynamite outrages, dacoities, and all
the other methods of terrorism dear to anarchists all over the world. But
that section is not very numerous, nor would it in itself be very
dangerous, if it did not exercise so fatal a fascination upon the
immature mind of youth. The real difficulty begins when one comes to
that much larger section of "advanced" politicians who are scarcely less
bitterly opposed to the maintenance of British rule, but, either from
prudential motives or lest they should prematurely alarm and alienate
the representatives of what is called "moderate" opinion, shrink from
the violent assertion of India's claim to complete political independence
and, whilst helping to create the atmosphere that breeds outrages,
profess to deprecate them.
The difficulty is further enhanced by the reluctance of many of the
"moderates" to break with their "advanced" friends by proclaiming,
once and for all, their own conviction that within no measurable time
can India in her own interests afford to forgo the guarantees of internal
peace and order and external security which the British Raj alone can
afford. Hence the desire on both sides to find some common
denominator in a nebulous formula which each can interpret as to time
and manner according to its own desires and aims. That formula seems
to have been discovered in the term Swaraj, or self-rule, which, when
euphemistically translated into Colonial self-government for India,

offers the additional advantage of presenting the political aspirations of
Indian "Nationalism" in the form least likely to alarm Englishmen,
especially those who do not care or wish to look below the surface and
whose sympathies are readily won by any catchword that appeals to
sentimental Liberalism. Now if Swaraj, or Colonial self-government,
represents the minimum that will satisfy Indian Nationalists, it is
important to know exactly what in their view it really means.
Fortunately on this point we have some data of indisputable authority.
They are furnished in the speeches of an "advanced" leader, who does
not rank amongst the revolutionary extremists, though his refusal to
give evidence in the trial of a seditious newspaper with which he had
been connected brought him in 1907 within the scope of the Indian
Criminal Code. Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal, a high-caste Hindu and a man
of great intellectual force and high character, has not only received a
Western education, but has travelled a great deal in Europe and in
America, and is almost as much at home in London as in Calcutta. A
little more than three years ago he delivered in Madras a series of
lectures on the "New Spirit," which have been republished in many
editions and may be regarded as the most authoritative programme of
"advanced" political thought in India. What adds greatly to the
significance of those speeches is that Mr. Pal borrowed their keynote
from the Presidential address delivered in the preceding year by the
veteran leader of the "moderates," Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, at the annual
Session of the Indian National Congress. The rights of India, Mr.
Naoroji had said, "can be comprised in one word--self-government or
Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies." It was
reserved for Mr. Pal to define precisely how such Swaraj could be
peacefully obtained and what it must ultimately lead to. He began by
brushing away the notion that any political concessions compatible
with the present dependency of India upon Great Britain could help
India to Swaraj. I will quote his own words, which already
foreshadowed the contemptuous reception given by "advanced"
politicians to the reforms embodied in