Reflections on the problems of India

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'reflections

ON THE

PROBLEMS INDIA

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EPISTLE DEDICATORY ix

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ..... I

Chapter I

If, at the present moment in India, a person wishes to win the applause of the educated classes, he has simply to walk up a public platform, take up the cries of the day, and descant learnedly on them. He would naturally commence with Elementary Education, take up next the problem of the Caste System, and then go to that of Industrial Development, and end with casting the Political Future of India and showing how its heterogeneous races can become one united, self-governing community. " I ask," questions the facile speaker in a splendid peroration, "what nobler task could be set to our great publicists than that of threshing out these momentous problems of modern India and earning the lasting gratitude of coming generations? When I come to think of the responsibility—the awful responsibility — that rests on each one of us, I stand — simply appalled ! Believe me, gentlemen, on the right solution of these problems rests the salvation of three hundred million souls." Some go even further — among them being the first men of our generation — and say that the progress of India rests entirely on the first of these problems. More than a year back Mr. Gokhale said that he was whole-heartedly in accord with the proposition that all national progress was really bound up with the question of mass education, and that there would be no real national progress worth speaking of, unless there were a universal diffusion of education among the masses of the people. " I am glad that there are signs visible on all sides," continued Mr. Gokhale, "which go to show that this great truth — this profound truth — namely, that there can be no real national progress for our people without universal mass education—this great fundamental and profound truth is being realised in an ampler and ampler measure on all sides of us. . . . Four villages out of every five in the country are still without a school ; and seven children out of every eight ^'•owing in ignorance and darkness and all the moral and helplessness which comes of such ignorance and . . . That ninety-four per cent, of our people should be sunk in ignorance, superstition and squalor — I can think of no injustice more cruel or monstrous than this."

This is a grave indictment. And it becomes all the more serious when we consider the lips from which it fell. In all his claims for elementary education the great Indian is wholly supported by the most enlightened of the ruling princes of India. *' In India," remarked the Gaekwar some time back, " there is a great need of unity. There are several ways of bringing about this end, but the best is universal education. For ignorance is at the root of every kind of misunderstanding ; and if we remove ignorance we shall remove misunderstanding and everything that tends to retard the progress of a country. For every kind of progress, whether moral, political, or industrial, education is necessary.^^ His Highness is certainly not the only one among the ruling princes to urge the claims of mass education. The Begum of Bhopal after her return from Europe gave expression to her convictions on this subject in equally emphatic language. " Just now I only wish to say this," observed Her Highness, " that the great qualities of the Western nations, their expanding wealth, and their swift progress in all the walks of Hfe, are all due to the women of all these countries being well educated and to the training they impart to their children. . . . You should therefore make the education of your sex the chief object of your lives, you should help the poor, and always remember that the best of all things you can do is to help the members of your sex to get a good education. Remember that among us, even if one generation get good education, the ship of our country will be steered clear of the rocks of poverty and the shoals of ignorance."

That this opinion about the incalculable advantages of mass education is by no means confined to the most educated of the Indian princes and people, was abundantly proved by the splendid reception which the Elementary Education Bill of Mr. Gokhale met with throughout the country. Mr. Gokhale claimed with perfect justice that no measure of our time had received such weighty, such enthusiastic, such overwhelming public support as this Bill did. Most men of light and leading in the country, men distinguished in every walk of life, in the professions, in business, in public affairs, and in patriotic and philanthropic endeavour were on the side of the Bill. The Indian Press with hardly an exception approved of it, and many Anglo-Indian papers, such as the Times of India in Bombay, the Indian Daily News in Calcutta, and the Madras Times in Madras, extended to it their valuable support. The main opposition came from official quarters, and even here, though the Government thought it premature and impracticable, they were entirely at one with the underlying object of the Bill. " We are all of us working," asserted Sir Harcourt Butler, "for the same object. I should rejoice as much as they to see a condition of things in which elementary vernacular education could be compulsory and free in India. The Government of India are deeply concerned to bring about such a condition of things. We are convinced of the necessity of breaking down illiteracy in India, and the interest of the Government of India has not been confined to words. . . .

There are many difficulties ahead, but we shall not flinch, we shall not falter on the way ; we are determined resolutely to combat ignorance through the length and breadth of this ancient land, up and down ; and though the struggle may be long and arduous, I do believe, with all my heart I do believe, we shall prevail." From the above it is perfectly evident that as regards the principle of mass education all hold the same view, though opinions differ as to the advisability of making it immediately free and compulsory. And this unquestioned acceptance of its principle is not difficult to understand when we consider all the certain advantages that are expected to result from the enlightenment of the masses. The first and foremost argument in its favour is that every civilised country in the world, without an exception, has come to recognise the necessity and incalculable value of mass education. The State to-day accepts everywhere the education of children as a prime duty which it dare not in any conceivable circumstance repudiate. Even if we suppose the advantages of an elementary education to lie mainly in the capacity to read and write, its universal diffusion is a matter of prime importance, for literacy, as Mr. Gokhale would say, is better than illiteracy any day. But there are weighty reasons why in India particularly the banishment of illiteracy should be considered an achievement sufficient to make the reputation of any statesman. With universal education, claimed Mr. Gokhale, the mass of our countrymen will have a better chance in life. With universal education there will be hopes of better success for all efforts, official or non-official, for the amelioration of the people, their social progress, their moral improvement and their economic well-being. " My Lord, with ninety-four per cent, of our countrymen sunk in ignorance," questioned Mr. Gokhale, "how can the advantages of sanitation be properly appreciated? and how can the industrial efficiency of the worker be improved ? With ninety-four per cent, unable to read and write, how can the evil of superstition be effectively combated ? and how can the general level of life in the country be raised ? " Besides, elementary education means a keener enjoyment of life, a more refined standard of living, and a higher level of intelligence for the whole community generally. He who reckons these advantages lightly, argued Mr. Gokhale, may as well doubt the value of light or fresh air in the economy of human health.

It will be urged that a person who brings in a Bill on mass education is bound to hold out such high hopes in order to enlist our whole-hearted support of his measure, and consequently we should hesitate to accept them without a careful and independent examination. There might be justification in this line of argument were it not that even the foremost opponent of the Bill claimed for it the same wide possibilities. " Primary education can fit the masses in this country," remarked Sir H. Butler, " to cope on more equal terms with the forces, the strong and pressing forces, of material progress. It can create a greater adaptability to agriculture and industrial advancement. It can enlarge the minds and brighten the outlook of the people, and foster progressive desire which is the root of the economic growth of a community."

If all the wonderful claims put forward by the advocates of elementary education were true — nay, if we could be assured even of some of its advantages, it would indeed be a blessed work, and not a moment should be lost in accepting the principle of free and compulsory education and having it immediately introduced in the country. No line of argument on the score of cost, or want of other requisite facilities, would avail us in the least. It may cost us four millions, as Mr. Gokhale calculates, or eight as Sir H. Butler does, or twelve as a confirmed pessimist might ; but at all costs millions must be found, for the advantages that the coming generations would reap therefrom are manifold and out of all proportion to the hardship and sacrifice the present generation would be put to to secure those millions. In a like manner all other obstacles in the way of reaching that noble end must be as resolutely overcome. The Hon. Mr. Sharpe may seriously warn us that money spent on four years of instruction would be thrown away " sans inspection, sans trained teachers, sans houses, satis equipment, satis everything"; but even if the Hon. Member summoned half a dozen more sans^s, it ought not to frighten the Government from taking its courage in both hands and making a determined start in the blessed work of enlightening three hundred millions of people now groping in darkness. For here, as in everything else, we ought to take our stand on that great dictum : " Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone."

One point is quite clear from all that has been said in the preceding pages — that as regards the principle of mass education, both Officials and Non-officials are in complete accord. They both have an unbounded faith in its righteousness, and where they differ is about the method of putting that principle into practice. The Officials uphold the voluntary, while the Non-officials the compulsory system. But the soundness of the principle itself nobody even dreams of calling into question, for it is taken for granted that mass education could be productive of nothing but good ; and he who ventures to doubt its great and manifold uses may as well doubt the utility of fresh air and light. In other words, to every rational creature the " three R's " are as indispensable as light, warmth and air. Every man born in a civilised country has an undeniable claim 1 on the community to be instructed in the " three R's " : it is his birthright, and no one who cherishes any sense of common humanity would ever think of depriving him of it. The greatest statesmen and philosophers of the nineteenth century — men who have left an indelible mark on the history of their age — have consistently upheld and strenuously proclaimed the necessity and value of mass education ; and it may be said that no man who expects to find even a partial hearing for his words, or any weight attached to them, will ever dare to question the almost unanimous verdict of these great men, with the whole civilised world at their back.

And yet I find myself in the position of such a person. I belong to that small class of men, so accurately described by the Hon. Mr. Gokhale as consisting of "those who could not understand either the necessity or the value of mass education, to whom the dignity of man as man was an incomprehensible idea, and who regarded the poorer classes as made solely to serve those who were above them. These men held such views because they knew no better." I can quite understand the unmitigated contempt of Mr. Gokhale for "these men" when I remember that the hon. gentleman is brought up in a school of thought which considers that there is nothing more worthy of human eff'ort than the elevation of the lower masses in the scale of humanity. It was a school that came into existence in England in the earlier years of the last century when, owing to the then prevalent doctrine of laissez /aire, it was found that the social welfare and material interests of the working classes were almost entirely neglected by the governing classes. In accordance with the views of competent critics, the dominant party thought their duty to the community at large ended when they provided the conditions necessary for the most rapid material progress, and they believed that if they secured progress in this direction all the other essentials of life would assuredly be added thereto, gradually and indirectly. By this policy unexampled progress was made during the last decade of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and England was able to bear the terrible strain of the Napoleonic Wars ; but there was no reason to believe that Englishmen on the whole were either the better or happier for this policy.

In fact, it was believed in some quarters that destitution and poverty were on the increase, and the condition of the masses was becoming worse every day and needed the urgent attention of the ruling classes. Philanthropic sentiment and religious enthusiasm were not content to leave the matter there, and public opinion was gradually roused to demand that practical statesmanship and expert advice should be brought to remedy this state of affairs. At any rate, there was a very general consensus of feeling that something must be done, that definite efforts must be made to foster and promote human well-being. This brought over the politics of England a wave of humanitarian enthusiasm which, during the rest of the nineteenth century, swept all before it, and one measure after another was put on the Statute Book for the amelioration of the social, political and material condition of the people. A series of Factory Laws was enacted from time to time, the parliamentary franchise was extended at every available opportunity, and various restrictions on internal trade and heavy imposts on foreign commerce were one after another removed. And though, as a result of years of humanitarian legislation and State benevolence, much of the surface evil was got rid of, still it was found by experience that State interference, after all, could have but very limited effect on the real well-being of the people until the people themselves were sufficiently enlightened to look after their own interests ; and that the mere giving of political liberty could not make them worthy of it until they had developed sufficient understanding to make a tolerably intelligent use of the franchise. Then it was that the cry of mass education was raised by some one, to be immediately taken up in divers tones all over England. The highest hopes were given and the most extravagant ideas entertained about the results of popular enlightenment. In fact, it was believed then, as it is now in India, that the solution, the panacea, the way to all social, political and national happiness, collective as well as individual, lay in education and education alone. The consequence was that the Education Bill was brought into

Parliament and passed into law. I think the time has now come to consider whether the forty years that have gone by since the momentous Act was passed have produced as great a change for the better as the English people were led to expect at the date of its passing. He would indeed be a bold man who would venture to pronounce any definite view on the subject even after carefully weighing all the complicated issues in which it is involved. I know I can get a cartload of numskulls any day, here as well as in England, to recount to me the innumerable advantages that England has derived as the direct outcome of that measure, but the wisest men of England are unable to make any definite statement on the subject. Last year Lord Rosebery, addressing the Educational Institute of Scotland, at Edinburgh, hesitated to pronounce his opinion on the question with reference to Scotland, and remarked, " I cannot test the effect ; I do not suppose any one could test the effect ; but that, after all, is the question that your Edinburgh Institute has to answer ; that is the point on which we are all interested, whether old or young — whether your educational system, with all its requirements, all its intricacies, has produced better men for Scotland primarily, and for Great Britain afterwards, than the old system that prevailed before? I suppose everybody here," continued Lord Rosebery, "who is conversant with the students who are being turned out, is perfectly confident of their reply. / have no such confidence ; but then I have no knowledge on which to base it. There are circumstances connected with our population which do make one feel at times that those Education Acts of Mr. Forster and Lord Young have not gathered up the population, have itot raised them in the way which we were once led to expect. . . . Education is undoubtedly higher in all the standards and all the subjects, all that makes for ' grants ' — but I sometimes wonder in myself whether we are turning out better men morally, better men physically, men of more capacity for the work which the world sets before them. If that be so, if there be any doubt permissible on that point, zve must admit that the great Act of Lord Yoitng has not been so g?'eat a success as we anticipated J'

Be this as it may, ever since the middle of last century we have amongst us in India a class of men who, having been brought up on the principles of this English School of Humanitarianism, have retained throughout their lives almost at a fever-heat the enthusiasm it evoked and the sentiment it fostered for the helping and uplifting of those millions who are low down in the scale of humanity. To this glorious band of noble-minded Indians belonged the first Sir Jamshedji, Keshub Chunder Sen, Naorosji Furdoonji, Sorabji Bengalee, Ranade and Telang : and on its roll of present members may be traced the names of Dadbhoy Naoroji, Sir Subramania Aiyer, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Bannerjea, Sir N. G. Chandavarkar and, finally, the name of one who in time to come will be reckoned as the greatest of them all — G. K. Gokhale. What India owes to them, no one can fully calculate ; what India would have been without them, no one dare think ! To voice the grievances and proclaim the needs of India's dumb millions, these men of large hearts and acute sensibilities have made the end and aim of their lives. Their anxiety for the sacred cause they have at heart knows no bounds and finds expression on the most trivial occasions. " For God's sake," implored Mr. D. E. Vatcha one day of one of the members of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, who ventured to treat lightly the complaints of poor people regarding irregularity in the supply of water, " have some compassion on the poor and don't treat them in the way — the cruel way — you do."

This makes pathetic reading; but the little incident accurately epitomises the earnestness and intense humanity of our present-day political leaders. They simply bubble over with superabundance of enthusiasm and redundance of philanthropic zeal for their less fortunate fellow-men. The same enthusiasm, the same zeal, took by storm the best minds of England in the last century, and it was gradually discovered there, as it will be here, that not infrequently humanity, like "vaulting ambition, . . . o'erleaps itself and falls on the other." The classical instance is the working of the Poor Law at the beginning of the last century. How it aggravated the very malady it was designed to allay, how the industrious poor man was penalised for his thriftiness by being made to provide for the selfpauperised idler, is common knowledge. And so in many other departments of social polity it is now gradually being found out that there is no greater menace to all that is highest in men than the amazing pretensions of the masses, awakened and fostered as they are by the extreme doctrines of the humanitarians. These men uphold the so-called rights of the generality of the people against the aristocracy, the right of the weak against the strong, of the uncouth against the beautiful, of woman against man, of the serf against the lord. This Nazarene view of universal love and brotherhood, containing within itself the most mischievous, the most fatal postulate of Equality, spread like wild-fire through Europe after the fall of

lO

Napoleon. For the first time philanthropy became universal, and took in her loving embrace all that was pitiable, unsound, and helpless. The consequence was that there came over Europe a kind of Christian democratic revolution which brought in its train the reign of mediocrity, the command of one not born to command. The rage of the populace was let loose and vented itself in attacks on the lives of their masters. Every bawler received ingenuous homage, and every novelty and stupidity was welcomed with open arms and all that was old and eternally true was cast to the winds. The ethics of the day upheld the negative virtues of family life. Not power was sought, but avoidance of mistakes : not actions that favoured strength, but those that sustained weakness. The ideal was the nurse's work in a hospital, the " unselfish " selfsacrifice of the mother and the child, and the rest of the picture-book virtues of a like order. Thus it was everywhere. Generation after generation was emasculated. Literature lost much of its former virility. Incompetent critics had the say everywhere in parliaments, in ministries, journalism, universities. Collective-Wisdom was enthroned and rule went by polls and not by brains.

Napoleon and Goethe were among the first to foresee the advent of democracy and all the evil it was likely to bring in its train. " The fools ! " cried Napoleon, when the Allied Monarchs came back to French soil. " Cannot they see that I have stifled anarchy and revolution, and laboured twenty years to give monarchy a new lease of life ? They will see that, after I am gone, theirs will not be the strength to dam the flood, which will sweep them along." The march of events, since those fateful words were uttered, has shown that no oracle ever foretold a deeper truth. To those troubles of the heart, which Rousseau's teaching had quickened in Europe — a philanthropic and educational enthusiasm — Goethe was not merely apathetic but positively hostile. His contempt of the claims of the mob knew no bounds, and he often quoted Epicurus' motto : " What the people di'ssLpprowes must be right." Plutarch relates a story of Phocion, who, like Epicurus, had the poorest possible opinion of the intelligence of the people at large, that when once he gave his opinion to the Athenians, and was met with the general approbation and applause of the assembly, turning to some of his friends, he asked them, "Have I inadvertently said something foolish ? " If Phocion had this opinion of perhaps the most cultured populace that we meet with in the history of the world, can we wonder that the kingly and scornful spirit of Goethe should

II have summoned all the resources of the language in order to pour his contempt on the low-browed herd he found around him.

" You clods and clouts, You losels and louts, The devil wouldn't have you !

Brutes, to your sty !

Babies and flunkeys, Mummers and monkeys.

No such stuff for me, Were it given free !

Could I but master you.

Oh, oh, the things I'd do !

Give you such tousings, Give you such lousings !

Had I men but twenty,

Mine were all your plenty ! " i

A contemporary of theirs, Stendhal, was equally severe c. the pretensions of the tiny, weak, crafty Liliputians of his tin who set about the task of fettering the sleeping Gulliver. B vehemently preached against the modern passionless Code c Decencies and proclaimed that " without Passion there ineither virtue nor vice." This was his persistent theme.t Weakness, he argued, knows neither good nor evil, and is too paltry even to do evil. It does not sin, because it cannot ; it tells no lies, for it cannot ; it neither robs nor murders, for its courage is no more. Humanity, he maintained, had had so many teeth drawn out by the systems of government, State, tradition and morals, that it was high time to breathe into mankind anew some whit of the divine spark ; otherwise a generation of man might come that destroyed nothing but also created nothing ; and this was the fearsome outlook ahead.

In the same vein Stendhal's greal successor, Friedrich Nietzsche, proclaimed that "Good is what springeth from strength, and evil v/hat ariseth from weakness." No man was a greater despiser of the preposterous demands of the mob than Nietzsche. "For to-day," cries the great immoraHst in perhaps the most illuminating page in his masterpiece, " have the petty people become master : they all preach submission and humiHty and policy and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

"Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash : — that wisheth now to be master of all human destiny — O disgust ! Disgust ! Disgust !

" That asketh and asketh and never tireth : ' How is man to maintain himself best, longest, most pleasantly ? ' Thereby — are they the masters of to-day.

"These masters of to-day — surpass them, O my brethren — these petty people : they are the Superman's greatest danger !

" Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable comfortableness, the ' happiness of the greatest number ' — !

" And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily I love you, because ye know not to-day how to live, ye higher men ! For thus do ye live — best !

Few philosophers of modern times are less understood than \ietzsche, and no one certainly is more maligned than he. It • the fashion of the day to laugh when a man betakes himself riously to anything save sport, and so poor Nietzsche is xnded a megalomaniac and his " ravings " cast aside. Yet, we will but condescend to give more than a superficial conieration to his peculiar philosophy, we shall find there is Dthing particularly peculiar about it. All virile philosophers ave attacked with almost equal ferocity the pitiful ravings of .ose-pink sentimentalism and the frantic, half-amusing struggle of modern democracy to equalise the heaven-made inequalities. Carlyle had the same fear as Nietzsche, that the foolish and the feeble were slowly overcoming the wise and the valiant. " And shall I tell you," asks Carlyle, " which is the one intolerable sort of slavery — the slavery over which the very gods weep ? That sort is not rifest in the West Indies : but, with all its sad fruits, prevails in nobler countries. It is the slavery of the strong to the weak ; of the great and noble-minded to the small and mean ! The slavery of Wisdom to Folly. When Folly all ' emancipated,' and become supreme, armed with ballot-boxes, universal suffrages, and appealing to what Dismal Sciences, Statistics, Constitutional Philosophies, and other Fool Gospels it has got devised for itself, can say to Wisdom : * Be silent, or thou shalt repent it ! Suppress thyself, I advise thee ; canst thou not contrive to cease, then ? ' That also in some anarchic-constitutional epochs has been seen. When, of high and noble objects, there remained, in the market-place of human beings, at length none ; and he that could not make guineas his pursuit, and the applause of flunkies his

^ Thus spake Zarathustra, p. 352. 13 reward, found himself in such a minority as seldom was before."!

As Nietzsche's hopes were centred in his Superman, so were Carlyle's in his Hero. " But I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling down into ever worse distress towards final ruin ; — all this I liken to dry, dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own. The dry, mouldering sticks are thought to have called him forth. They did want him greatly; but as to calling him forth — ! — Those are critics of small vision, I think, who cry : ' See, is it not the sticks that made the fire ? ' No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in the heap of barren, dead fuel. It is the last consummation of unbeHef. In all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the Great Man to have been the indispensable saviour of his epoch ; — the lightning, without which the fuel never would have burnt. The History of the World was the Biography of Great Men." ^ Again, with Nietzsche, Carlyle was unsparing in his contempt of the "deep froth-oceans of Benevolence," " Fraternity," " Emancipationprinciple," " Christian Philanthropy," and other most amiablelooking, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and allbewildering jargon. Finally, like Nietzsche, he takes an extensive survey of social affairs and finds them " in a state of the frightfulest embroilment, and, as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, . . . " ; and then warns us ''to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Association, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern j Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal ' Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society.' "