Author Of "Indian Unrest," "The Egyptian Problem," etc. "We shall in time so far improve the character of our Indian subjects as to enable them to govern and protect themselves."—Minute by Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, Dec. 31, 1824....

It is little more than ten years since I wrote my Indian Unrest . But they have been years that may well count for decades in the history of the world, and not least in the history of India. Much has happened in India to confirm many of the views which I then expressed. Much has happened also to lead me to modify others, and to recognise more clearly to-day the shortcomings of a system of government, in many ways unrivalled, but subject to the inevitable limitations of alien rule. At a very earl

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

As to the state of India before that date, no sort of material evidence has survived, or at any rate has yet been brought to light—no monuments, no inscriptions, very little pottery even, in fact very few traces of the handicraft of man; nor any contemporary records of undoubted authenticity. Fortunately the darkness which would have been otherwise Cimmerian is illuminated, though with a partial and often uncertain light, by the wonderful body of sacred literature which has been handed down to o

Of all the great religions that have shaped and are still shaping the destinies of the human race, Islam alone was borne forth into the world on a great wave of forceful conquest. Out of the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, with the Koran in the one hand and the sword in the other, the followers of Mahomed swept eastward to the confines of China, northward through Asia Minor into Eastern Europe, and westward through Africa into Spain, and even into the heart of medieval France. But it was not til

The basic fact which has governed the whole evolution of British rule in India is that we went there in the first instance as traders, and not as conquerors. For trade meant co-operation. There could be no successful trading for British traders unless they found Indian traders ready to co-operate with them in trade. That we ever went to India at all was due to the national instincts of an insular people accustomed to go down to the sea in ships and to trade with distant lands. When the rise of g

Many different causes, much more clearly apprehended to-day than at the time, contributed to provoke the great storm which burst over India in 1857. On the surface it was a military and mainly Mahomedan insurrection, but it was far more than that. It was a violent upheaval not so much against the political supremacy of Britain as against the whole new order of things which she was importing into India. The greased cartridges would not have sufficed to provoke such an explosion, nor would even Ma

Amongst the Western-educated classes the new forces which had been turning the minds of young India towards Swaraj as the watchword of national unity and independence had drawn much of their inspiration from text-books which taught them how large a share Nationalism had played in redeeming modern nations from alien oppression and in shaping the whole political evolution of Europe. It had emancipated the Balkan States from the alien thraldom of the Ottoman Sultans; it had helped to unify Italy an

A British Government of a more advanced type of liberalism than any of its Liberal predecessors found itself confronted as soon as it took office with a more difficult situation in India than had ever been dreamt of since the Mutiny, and the difficulties grew rapidly more grave. When Mr. Morley went to the India Office during the respite from agitation against the Partition of Bengal, procured by the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to India even more than by Lord Curzon's departure fro

The genuine outburst of enthusiasm with which India, whether under direct British administration or under the autonomous rule of indigenous dynasties, responded to the call of the Empire at the beginning of the war came almost as a revelation to the British public generally who knew little about India, and the impression deepened when during the critical winter of 1914-1915 Indian troops stood shoulder to shoulder with British troops in the trenches to fill the gap which could not then have been

Before this great statute could be brought into operation, and even whilst Parliament was still laboriously evolving it, a strange and incalculable figure was coming to the forefront in India, who, favoured by an extraordinary combination of untoward circumstances, was to rally round him some of the most and many of the least reputable forces which, sometimes under new disguises, the old and passive civilisation of India is instinctively driven to oppose to the disintegrating impact upon it of t

On probably the last of seventeen visits to India spread over some forty years, I landed after three years' absence in Bombay early in November 1920, on the eve of the first elections for the new popular assemblies created by the Act of 1919. Municipal elections there had been in India for a long time past, and elections for the Councils since 1909, but on a very restricted franchise or by indirect processes. To provide a real measure of popular representation, and even to secure the usefulness

The elections in the Southern Provinces presented a somewhat different picture though the defeat of "Non-co-operation" was equally complete. The Nerbudda river has been from times immemorial a great dividing line, climatic, racial, and often political, between Northern and Southern India. It still is so. For, whilst with a few relatively unimportant exceptions the whole of British India—save Burma, which, except from an administrative point of view, is not India at all—has been brought with perh

Only twelve years ago Lord Morley, with all his advanced liberalism and his broad sympathy for Indian aspirations, could not conceive the possibility of introducing Parliamentary institutions into India in his time or for generations to come. He would assuredly have had to revise his opinion could he have attended the first session of the Indian Legislative Assembly. In form its proceedings were not unworthy of a great Parliamentary Assembly. The speeches sometimes rose to a high level of eloque

If the war has wrought great changes in the political life of India, in its status within the Empire and in its constitutional relations with the United Kingdom, it has produced equally important changes in its economic situation and outlook. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report had not failed to note how largely economic factors entered into the political situation which the Secretary of State and the Viceroy were primarily concerned to study. India is, and probably must always remain, essentially an

Unless the economic situation improves again with a rapidity beyond even sanguine expectations, Government will have to lay before the Indian Legislature next winter a budget scarcely less unpleasant than the last one. Even if expenditure does not outrun the estimates, revenue can hardly fail to fall short of them. Mr. Hailey, with perhaps forced optimism, seems to have reckoned upon taxation old and new continuing to yield at much the same rate during a year which began and is likely to end in

Those who have persistently derided the "Non-co-operation" movement and announced its imminent collapse have been scarcely less wide of the mark than Mr. Gandhi himself when he began to predict that it would bring Swaraj to India by a date, not always quite the same, but always less than a year distant. The original programme of "Non-co-operation" has hitherto failed egregiously. Only very few lawyers have abandoned their practice in "Satanic" law-courts at his behest, still fewer Indians have s

A great constitutional experiment, of which the expressed purpose is to bring a self-governing India into full and equal partnership with all other parts of the British Empire, has been courageously launched in deep waters still only partially explored, and it has resisted the first onslaught of a singular combination of malignant forces. It is too early yet to speak with absolute assurance of its enduring success. For success must depend upon many factors outside India as well as within. All th

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