OLD AND NEW
BY SIR VALENTINE CHIROL





INDIA
OLD AND NEW


BY
SIR VALENTINE CHIROL

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.


MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1921




FOREWORD


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 early stage of the Great War the Prime Minister warned the
British people that, after the splendid demonstration India was already
giving of her loyalty to the cause for which the whole Empire was then
in arms, our relations with her would have henceforth to be approached
from "a new angle of vision." The phrase he used acquired a deeper
meaning still as the war developed from year to year into a
life-and-death struggle not merely between nations but between ideals,
and India claimed for herself the benefit of the ideals for which she
too fought and helped the British Commonwealth to victory. When victory
was assured, could India's claim be denied after she had been called in,
with all the members of the British Commonwealth, to the War Councils of
the Empire in the hour of need, and again been associated with them in
the making of peace? The British people have answered that question as
all the best traditions of British governance in India, and all the
principles for which they had fought and endured through four and a half
years of frightful war, bade them answer it.

The answer finally took shape in the great constitutional experiment of
which I witnessed the inauguration during my visit to India this winter.
It promises to rally as seldom before in active support of the British
connection those classes that British rule brought within the orbit of
Western civilisation by the introduction of English education, just
about a century ago. It has not disarmed all the reactionary elements
which, even when disguised in a modern garb, draw their inspiration from
an ancient civilisation, remote indeed from, though not in its better
aspects irreconcilable with, our own. A century is but a short moment of
time in the long span of Indian history, and the antagonism between two
different types of civilisation cannot be easily or swiftly lived down.
It would be folly to underrate forces of resistance which are by no
means altogether ignoble, and in this volume I have studied their origin
and their vitality because they underlie the strange "Non-co-operation"
movement which has consciously or unconsciously arrayed every form of
racial and religious and economic and political discontent, not merely
against British rule, but against the progressive forces which contact
with Western civilisation has slowly brought into existence under
British rule in India itself. These forces have been stirred to new
endeavour by the goal now definitely placed within their reach. That we
were bound to set that goal and no other before them I have tried to
show by reviewing the consistent evolution of British policy in India
for the last 150 years, keeping, imperfectly sometimes, but in the main
surely, abreast of our own national and political evolution at home and
throughout the Empire. Once placed in its proper perspective, this great
experiment, though fraught with many dangers and difficulties, is one of
which the ultimate issue can be looked forward to hopefully as the not
unworthy sequel to the long series of bold and on the whole wonderfully
successful experiments that make up the unique story of British rule in
India.

I have to express my thanks to the proprietors of _The Times_ for
allowing me to use some of the letters which I wrote for that paper
whilst I was in India last winter, and also to the Royal Society of Arts
for permission to reproduce the main portions of a lecture delivered by
me last year on Hinduism as the first of the Memorial Lectures
instituted in honour of the late Sir George Birdwood, to whom I owe as
much for the deeper understanding which he gave me of old India as I do
to the late Mr. G.K. Gokhale for the clearer insight I gained from him
into the spirit of new India whilst we were colleagues from 1912 to 1915
on the Royal Commission on Indian Public Services.

VALENTINE CHIROL.

34 CARLYLE SQUARE, CHELSEA,
_August 24,