Orders of the Day — East India Revenue Accounts.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 22 May 1919.

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Photo of Mr Thomas Bennett Mr Thomas Bennett , Sevenoaks

I would like to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India not only upon the singularly impressive speech with which he has introduced his Budget, but also upon the early date upon which he has been able to present it to the House. In India there has always been great complaint of the tardiness with which the Indian Budget has been presented. It has always come as the dry and unappreciated remainder biscuit after the Parliamentary banquet. Now the people of India will see that its importance is adequately recognised in the place which has been given to it in the Parliamentary calendar. Further, may I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the singularly courageous and outspoken way in which he has announced his intention to go through with the great project to which he has set himself. That will give encouragement in India and will exercise, I believe, a most beneficial influence, because the one thing which we have to guard against in India is the propagation of the idea that Parliament does not mean business in this matter, that Parliament is indifferent or that it is hostile. The right hon. Gentle- man has put an end, I hope, to that idea. It has been propagated in India, I believe, for malignant purposes. It has been propagated by those who are really against the Government, and I am afraid that that movement in India has received some countenance and help from certain movements here, which would be described, I suppose, by some who are intimately associated with them as Conservative movements, but which in my opinion will, unless checked, have a mischievous and disturbing tendency in India.

The hon. and gallant Member who spoke just now referred at some length to the Southborough and Feetham Reports and to the general scheme of reform for which we are to be prepared. I shall not imitate his example. He set out a number of matters which it will be time enough to discuss when we come to them, that is to say when the whole scheme of the Government is laid before the House. But he made one or two other references, and I wish that he were here to hear the comments that I am about to make upon them. One is this. He spoke of the plutocracy, which it is proposed, or he thinks it is proposed, in the coming Bill, to set up in the legislative system. So far as I understand, the franchise holders will consist of people who in Presidency towns, like Bombay, pay a rent equivalent to £8 a year. I do not see much plutocracy there. What most offends him is the presence of the special representation of mill owners. Those millowners are prominent Indian subjects. They are men who some time ago began to take a very active part in political life in India, and I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman when he comes before us with his full scheme will be able to give very good reasons why the millowners, plutocrats though they be, should have a place in his Parliamentary system. At any rate, if you take the Bombay Legislative Council, they will have only one representative out of over 100. However, I am going a little in advance of what I intended to say, because I would like to leave to the time when the Bill is introduced into Parliament all suggestions that I may have to offer upon it. The right hon. Gentleman gave a frank, but, one must own, a melancholy account of recent events in India. I would not like to minimise what he said, and certainly I would urge that we should bear in mind his assurance that the danger is not over. But there are some consoling elements in the situation.

First of all, let us remember that though things have been very disturbed in India recently, yet at a far more critical time than this has been we had the solid support of the whole people of India. When India was almost denuded, by the courage of Lord Hardinge, of British troops for the Empire War, India was loyal, and if you will bear that in mind, I think that is a consolation in the depression which has followed from the recent troubles in India. Further, there are local bright spots. It is rather astonishing now that during the recent disturbances there should have been serious disturbances in Gujerat, because in my time in India the people there were among the most quiet and contented in all India. If you looked for disturbances you would have looked for them in Poonah, but an Indian gentleman who has come from there recently tells me that not only was there superficial quietness in the Deccan, but that there was quietness even under the surface, and that there were not as many as half a dozen passive resisters in Poonah, which is a city of over 150,000 inhabitants. Those are reassuring statements. As to the Rowlatt Act, I do not know if it is wise to make too much of the trouble which has arisen from that. Hon. Members state, with a great deal of confidence, that the Rowlatt Bill has been the cause of all the trouble. It is one of many causes. I think that the right hon. Gentleman himself, when dealing with the question some weeks ago, told us that the troubles in India were not to be attributed to one, but rather to many causes, and it seems to me, in regard to this matter, that it would be wise to bear in mind the observation of a great statesman, which was that history took very small account of the controversies which caused most commotion at the time. I remember that I landed in India almost immediately after an agitation associated with a Bill which bore the name of a learned gentleman who happily still holds a place of honour in this House. The Ilbert Bill has been forgotten long since, though the name of its author is still cherished, and we may reasonably hope that before very long we shall forget the Rowlatt Bill as people in India have long since forgotten the Ilbert Bill, and that we shall forget it, because I believe and hope that there will be no reason to put the Act itself into operation.

I do not want to minimise the position. I hope that all those on the other side, and those who will probably be coming back on the other side to take part in the discussion, have studied the Rowlatt Report, because if they have they will have seen it demonstrated, I believe, to their satisfaction, that that Report establishes the absolute necessity of some departure from the ordinary procedure of a judicial tribunal. We are told by the Punjab authorities that if it had not been for the special legislation which they had at their back it would have been impossible to put down the conspiracy there. But the point is this. One may sum up the statements in the Rowlatt Report in this way. Not only have the Government of Bengal especially, and some of the other Governments, had to deal with crime on a large scale, but it was organised crime, crime which was directed not only towards the murder of Europeans and outrage of many kinds, but it was avowedly directed towards driving the British Government out of India. Terrorism was one of the primary processes employed in that conspiracy, a terrorism which finally manifested itself in the fear, and sometimes the refusal, of persons to appear in court to give evidence against the accused. Those are conditions that cannot be dealt with by ordinary process of law. You may say what you like, invoke trial by jury and the rights of a British subject to fair and open trial, but when you have a community set against you, determined that by bloodshed and outrage of every kind they will terrorise the people and will shatter the administration, it seems to me there is only one course open. I hope that the Government of India will never be under any necessity to apply this Act. It will depend not upon this country but upon people in India whether the Act is to be applied or not.

Let me revert to one matter already referred to, because I do not think it should be passed over. That is this: The hon. Member referred to the growing expenditure in India. He dealt with the Army in particular, but the worst he had to say about the military extravagance practised by the Government of India was that the cost of the Army had gone up from £20,000,000 to £40,000,000. Considering that we were in war-time, and considering the enormous scale of the operations of the Army of India, that is a very small increase. As to the police and the increase in expenditure. The police and the schoolmasters, it seems to me, are the people who need most to be treated generously. I believe that part of the trouble in India, arises from the inadequate pay of sub- ordinates in the administration. Above all, the police ought to be well paid, and if there is a class needing to be better paid than the police it is the schoolmasters. During the absence of the right hon. Gentleman in India, I think that if his locum tenens had taken pen in hand, and, without consulting the right hon. Gentleman, had done his best to commit himself to a most extravagant bill for the pay of the schoolmasters of India, it would have contributed to increased contentment amongst vast numbers of the population of India. The hon. Member also spoke of railways, and he referred to the increase of £23,000,000 or £24,000,000 in the proposed outlay on railways in India. It is precious little if you realise that £24,000,000 laid out to-day in labour and in material is the equivalent of not more than £12,000,000 laid out before the War. It should be remembered that India has, as far as it could with safety, allowed its material and its railway equipment to fall out of condition during the War. Sometimes, and in some places, it has become dangerously out of repair; therefore, the least that can be done is to spend just now the £24,000,000 on railway extension and reparation. It was said that it would all be spent in England. I do not think that is correct, because I understand three of the great railways of India have made large contracts with the Tata Ironworks, and the policy of the Government of India is to spend in India all they can, and the tendency with regard to railways in future will be to supply their wants, particularly in material and in locomotives, if possible, from India itself.

I should not have intervened in this De bate but for the fact that a considerable part of my working life has been spent in India. It is true I left it some years ago, and some of my friends tell me that no one who has left India five years knows anything about that country. That is a rather discouraging idea, because it would mean that there is no such thing as an accumulation of knowledge and experience, and that the only people who know anything about India are people in that country, and while they are there. If there is any truth 'in that, I have done my best to correct it by frequent visits to that country. I think that one who at intervals visits a country is able to see its changes and watch its progress more than those who live there. Those who live there sometimes do not see the wood for trees. I mention this for the one reason that I want to establish the fact that India is a country which is-undergoing steady and important change. There is, I know, a belief that the East is unchanging. I think the poets are responsible for misleading the world in regard to that. There is one hackneyed quotation, a couplet which I should be ashamed to quote to the House. There is another a little less hackneyed about how The East bowed low before the blast, And plunged in thought again. India has not plunged in thought; she has been much too busy. We can see it in the improved condition of the people. Say what one will, India is prospering under British rule. The old story that India was being drained for the benefit of England—that fallacy has been abandoned even by those who were most energetic in propagating. it, and I do not think we shall hear it again. It is not in material prosperity only that India is going forward. It is in the self-consciousness of the people. There is a sense of national being which is steadily being evolved in India. The country is moving; it is organising itself. Take up any daily paper in one of the great cities in India and read the notices of meetings connected with new societies. The mind and thought and energy of India are being organised on all hands. It is impossible while that is so that we shall stand still. There was a time when the average, fair-minded liberal Englishman going to India might be content to say this, "Well we will deal justly with the country, we will mete out fair dealing between the inhabitants; we shall be efficient, economical, and we will leave the rest to Providence; but we cannot invite the people of India to have any part in controlling their own destinies." That would have been an honourable, straightforward attitude of mind, and I know there were times when I felt that if we had done as much as that we should have done as much as could be expected of us. But I have long since dropped that belief I recognise now, and have done for a long time—and it has been brought home to me with increasing conviction—that we must more closely associate the people of India with the administration than we have done.

I want to speak very frankly on one point. What are the relations between the Government of India and the people? Have they improved or have they gone back? To be frank they have not improved; they have gone back. I have tested it in various ways, and apart from the general consideration that there is considerable feeling between a portion of the people of India and Europeans, I have applied one test. I remember years ago when the Government of Bombay issued a resolution publicly censuring certain people for certain misconduct. "But," I asked a member of the Government, "what use is that—will it do any good?" Yes, "he said," it will, because the minds of the people of India are so constituted that if there is an open expression of dissatisfaction by Government it will do good. The wrongdoers are discredited in the eyes of their neighbours and the Government is so far strengthened. "In recent visits to India I have borne that in mind, and I have asked people in various parts of India how far is it still true, and I have been told by one after another," I do not believe there is a part of India in which that proposition can truthfully be made." That is not a satisfactory state of things. You may say, Are you going to improve things by associating the people of India more closely with the Government of their country? My answer to that is this. You are not going to improve things simply by a policy of repression, by a policy of asserting law and order. We have countries near at hand in which, while with one hand healing measures have been carried out on the other the strong arm of the law has been asserted, and while these two processes have gone on simultaneously we have made progress. If in India we on the one hand firmly assert the law, as the right hon. Gentleman assured us he means to do, and on the other hand meet the legitimate aspirations of the people and show them that we are in sympathy with their progressive ideas, then I believe that the problem will be solved. But we must bear this in mind, that we have to encourage our friends in India and not to countenance efforts which are being made in this country, which I think will make it difficult if they succeed for us to keep the friends that the Government have got. We are being told that the Moderates in India have no real loyalty towards the Government. To my mind the most harmful thing that has been done lately is the attempt to discredit the loyalty of the Moderates in India. I read the other day in a publication which is intended to check the reform movement this: In regard to the paramount duty of maintaining law and order and of preventing sedition, murder and anarchy, the views of both Moderates and Extremists coincide to such an extent as to be prejudicial to the claims of Indian politicians to manage their own affairs, and fraught with great danger to the stability of the Government which the Reform scheme proposes to establish in India. That, in my opinion, is as harmful, unjust, and as unfair a thing as could possibly have been written. I have the happiness to count amongst the Moderates of India a, number of personal friends, whose loyalty and high character I can attest by many years of close friendship and association. On their behalf I resent this. It is not only untrue; it is a cruel libel, and it is harmful. Unless we know where to find our friends, and unless we satisfy the Moderates of India that we trust them and wish to work with them and they with us, our day in India is done. I hope that fact will be fully realised. I can imagine contingencies in which the Government would not have a friend in India, and if a policy of this kind were carried out, the day after that the British Government would not have a friend in India. I hope that those who are carrying out this movement in England, and who think that they are supporting British rule, will reconsider their position, and will realise that they are putting themselves in the position really of enemies of British rule, and that they are hampering the British Government in its attempt to exercise rule in that country. Let me quote a few words that came to me from a very well-informed publicist in India a few weeks ago on that very point: If Parliament fails to deal boldly and resolutely with this question of reform, they may make up their minds that every Moderate man will be driven out of public life in India and that he will have to deal with a larger, a growing body of Sinn Feiners, of India without any moral backing whatever in the country, and every well wisher of the British connection will feel that he has been sold. Those are very serious remarks, but I believe they are founded not only upon knowledge but upon good sense. I wish, in conclusion, to refer to the work of a recent Member of this House, and I know that the House follows with sympathy and kindly recollection the career of those of its Members who have gone to perform duty in different parts of the Empire. There have been parts of India during recent times in which it may be complained that the course taken by the Government was not wise. We are not here to sit in judgment on any Government in India in regard to its action during the riots. But there was one Presidency in which, apart from the unfortunate happening in one district, peace was kept. There were troubles in Bombay earlier in the year, and there was great fear that on the 11th of April serious disturbances would break out. I know that the situation on the morning of that day was most critical. There were demonstrations by thousands and hundreds of thousands through the streets of Bombay, and soldiers and police were in readiness to put down any disorder, but strict instructions were given that not a finger was to be lifted against the demonstrators until any disorder took place. The processions, largely under the influence of Mr. Gandhi, peacemaker as well as disturber, went through the town in an orderly way. Let me read what an Indian native paper says of that day: Great credit is due to the authorities for the feelings of forbearance with which they comported themselves in extremely trying circumstances, and the splendid feeling which prevails in Bombay to-day towards them is their best reward. I never read such an expression as this in an Indian paper: The police are regarded by the public as friends almost for the first time in the annals of Indian administration. The name of His Excellency the Governor—— that is a former Member of this House, Sir George Lloyd— is on everybody's lips, and the sentiment universally felt is one of high respect and admiration. I am sure hon. Members in this House will hear that with pride and satisfaction of one who was so recently amongst us, who in the highways and byways of the Empire has done wonderful service during the last few years, and that he has been able to combine strength with prudence, and moderation, and tolerance, and that in a time of such terrible crisis he, without the shedding of blood or any coercive measures, has been able to keep under restraint a very agitated population.