



Produced by Al Haines








  THE
  PASSING OF EMPIRE

  BY

  H. FIELDING-HALL

  AUTHOR OF "THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE"
  "THE HEARTS OF MEN," ETC.



  "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
  that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"--that
  is to say by ideas



  LONDON
  HURST & BLACKETT, LTD.
  PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C.
  1913




PREFACE

Most people when they talk of India, most books when they treat of
India, are concerned with its differences from the rest of the world.
It is the appearance and the dress of its peoples, their customs and
habits, their superstitions and religions, that are explained and
wondered at.

That is not so here.  In this book little or nothing is said of any of
these matters; they do not interest me; they are superficial, and I do
not care for surface things; they are what divide, and truth is what
unites.

It is of the humanity which India shares with the rest of the world,
the hearts that beat always the same under whatever skin, the ideals
that can never be choked by no matter what customs or religions, that
this book is concerned with.

India sees life through different windows than we do; but her eyes are
as our eyes, and she has the same desires as we have.  She has been
nearly dead or sleeping for long, but at last she moves.  She is awake
or waking.  Should it not be our task, our pleasure and our pride, to
help her early steps along the path of conscious strength that leads to
a national life such as that we have been proud of?  And to do so must
we not try to understand her?

Have we ever tried?

I do not think we have; but the time is coming when, unless we can go
hand in hand with her along her path to nationhood, she will desert us.
Her destiny is calling her; shall we keep her back?

We cannot keep her back.  "No one can be more wise than Destiny."  And
if we stand in her way, who will suffer like we shall?  For her sake
and for ours should we not try to understand?

This book is an attempt at a beginning.




  CONTENTS

  PREFACE


  PART I

  THE OLD INDIA

  CHAPTER

  I. Indian Unrest
  II. The People
  III. The Civilian
  IV. His Training
  V. Criminal Law
  VI. Procedure
  VII. Civil Law
  VIII. The Village
  IX. Opium and Excise


  PART II

  COUNSELS OF DESPAIR

  X. The Provincial Councils
  XI. The Indian as Civilian



  PART III

  A NEW INDIA

  XII. The New Civilian
  XIII. His Training
  XIV. Other Services
  XV. Law Reform
  XVI. Courts Reform
  XVII. Self-Government
  XVIII. Education
  XIX. Conclusion





PART I

THE OLD INDIA



CHAPTER I

INDIAN UNREST

We do not hear so much of the discontent in India now as we did three
or four years ago.  There are no reports of seditious meetings,
incendiary propaganda, or disloyal tendencies.  The attempt upon the
Viceroy is declared to be an isolated act, springing from no general
cause; a sporadic outbreak of crime which has no importance.  No
special measures have to be taken, nor special legislation passed,
though the old repressive legislation is not repealed.  In the English
daily papers there is little said of India, and no news is said to be
good news.  Therefore in public estimation India has fallen back from
her temporary fever into the immemorial apathy of the East.  She is
content, and no one need trouble himself about her.  The sedition was
but a froth upon the surface, it had no deep-lying causes; it was
temporary, local, unimportant.  We need trouble ourselves no more about
it.

There could be no greater nor more fatal mistake.

There may have been outbursts of irritation like that over the Bengal
partition which have passed because the cause was removed; we may be
now in the trough and not upon the crest of a wave, but that is all
that can be said.  The discontent has not passed, nor will it, nor can
it pass.  It is deep-rooted in the very nature of things as they are
now.  It is not local, nor is it confined to one or two strata of
society, nor is it directed against one or two acts of Government.  It
is universal, in all provinces, in all classes, directed not against
this act or that act, but against the Government as a whole.  This is
very evident to those upon the spot, has been evident for many years.
The reason more has not been said about it is the absurd notion that
talking of the discontent will tend to increase it, as if real
discontent ever arose from words, or as if it could be understood
unless it were talked about.  It should also be evident to those not
upon the spot who reflect on causes and effects.  For instance, could
the partition of Bengal have raised such a sudden flame had there been
peace before?  People in neither the East nor the West are roused into
such sudden and fierce anger by an administrative change even if the
change is not to their tastes.  For there was no real change of
government, nor substantive hardship.  The hardship was sentimental
hardship at the worst, not the less a real hardship for that.

No.  There was discontent before, and the partition only fanned it into
flame.

And that discontent is not sudden.  It has grown slowly for many years.
It is not local; in one province it may be more apparent than in
another, but it is universal.  It is not temporary, but increases.  So
much is admitted by those who know.  Yet no one thinks of diagnosing
it.  They shut their eyes, they sit upon the safety-valve, they give
measures which they hope will cause relief but which cannot do so; they
merely accentuate the difficulty and emphasise the ignorance that is
behind it on both sides.  How can you cure a fever unless you diagnose
the cause or causes?  To administer a drug at random is not likely to
succeed, yet what are the Councils but a random drug?  How can they
act?  No one knows what the patient suffers from; she herself least of
all, I think.  No one can truly diagnose his own illness nor prescribe
his remedy.  India feels uncomfortable, and clamours for anything she
can get.  The Indian Government gives her what it can, offering
profusest condolence, which is sincere; and for the rest sitting upon
her chest.

But that will avail nothing--how can it?  The fever is deep-seated, it
is remittent, it affects the whole system.  It is becoming dangerous
both to the patient and her physician.  For their lots are bound
together.  India cannot yet do without us.  She has not got the
organism to govern herself yet.  She has no structure, but is an
inchoate mass of people.  Did we part, India could not protect herself
against her neighbours by sea or land.  She would be a prey to any
enterprising Power.  Internally she would dissolve into anarchy.  No
one, I think, doubts this.  Some claim to doubt it--do they?

And as to England, what would we be were India reft from us?

Further, there is this: you cannot hold India by force alone.  Force
has its place, but it cannot stand alone.  We conquered and have
governed India by the consent of the people.  In fact, she conquered
herself and gave herself to us.  We never had to fight peoples, except
in Upper Burma, but only Governments--effete, discredited and weak.
The peoples accepted us: if not with gladness, yet they did accept.
Without that acquiescence we could have done nothing.  This must be
thoroughly realised, for it is an essential truth.  Anyone can see it
for himself.  Given any superiority you like to assume of Englishman
over Indian, could a handful of English officials and seventy thousand
or less British troops conquer and rule three hundred-and-fifty
millions of people, living in a climate suitable to them but deadly to
us, against their will?  It is impossible, incredible, absurd.  There
has been always a tacit and generally an active consent.  Now that
consent is disappearing.  Why?  And what is to be done?  It must be
discovered.  Therefore what I propose to do in this book is: First, to
show what our rule was at first and why it was so successful.

To explain how these factors of success gradually disappeared, while at
the same time the people progressed.

To show briefly the state of things to-day--how widely Government and
the people have drifted apart, and how unsuitable Government has become.

To examine the cures proposed and indicate how useless they must be.

Finally, to show how alone Government and the people can be brought
into harmony and the legitimate desires of both be fulfilled.

Let us go back on history, and recount the past so that we may explain
the present.

Some hundreds of years ago--it varies for different places--there were
in India kingdoms that were stable and strong and free.  The peoples
were enterprising, active and intelligent, and a high degree of
civilisation was common throughout all classes.  I don't think it is
generally realised that five or six hundred years ago India was ahead
of Europe in most matters.

Gradually all this decayed.  How and why it decayed this is not the
place to explain; there were several causes, the principal being
religion; but these systems of government all crumbled into dust.  It
was not merely dynasties or ruling classes that passed, but that the
whole fabric of its civilisation became weakened and lifeless.  The
organisms that held the people together dissolved, and instead of
kingdoms India became simply a mass of village communities, with no
organism above that.

Into this more or less anarchical country came the Moguls from the
north, and established an empire.  This Empire was accepted for the
same reason that ours subsequently was accepted--because the people
wanted first of all peace; and as peace could only be found under a
strong government, and the Mogul was the only strong power, they
accepted it.  They had, moreover, no organisations to enable them to
resist.

But this Mogul power had no root in the soil, not in any soil.  It had
cut itself away from its base, and it could not become rooted in India.
It had, therefore, never any real vitality.  The Normans in England
coalesced with the people after a time, and drew strength from them and
their institutions, but the Mogul Empire did not.

Nevertheless, it did to a certain extent enlist the people on its side,
accept them into its organism.  There was in the early Emperors no
fanaticism.  "As tolerant as Akbar" almost became a proverb.  Hindus
and Mussulmans worked together in harmony for the benefit of the
Empire.  That is why it succeeded at all, because the line of division
was almost ignored.  Then came the fanatic Aurungzebe, who by his zeal
for religion began the destruction of the Empire, which came very
quickly.  And when the ruling power was weakened and began to pass,
nothing remained.  It was simply