Welsh Journals

THE BRITISH CONNECTION WITH INDIA By K^T.Taul Student Christian Movement. 5s. nett He is a rash man, indeed, who would venture to give an account of the British Connection with India. He who would do so requires, among many other qualifications, a knowledge of history, an intimate acquaintance with an intricate machinery of government, a power to state facts accurately, an association with many varied races and be- liefs, the devotion of years, if not a lifetime, to study, a disposition to try to understand and avoid offence to others, and a detached, judicial mind, which can weigh evidence and arrive at conclusions, carefully and not in haste, which are just and at the same time critical both to Britain and to India. In all of these essential qualifications Mr. Paul is lamentably deficient. The author tells us that he wrote his book in the course of two short voyages from England to India. The whole of it portrays the haste and lack of balance incidental to writing in such cir- cumstances. There is here no intention of combating the mass of inaccuracies with which this volume is filled. To describe the British connection with India without a word of reference to such an important event as the Mutiny of 1857 is a measure of its historical value. If that tragedy be regarded as too ancient a matter of history to refer to, to pass over, without mention, such recent subjects as the Poona murders, the Gadr movement, the Bengal conspiracies, with their toll of innocent lives, the incipient rebellion, the murders, out- rages and sackings of 1919, the Ahmedabad riots, the tampering with the loyalty of certain of the troops during the war, the intrigues with Afghanistan, the Silk Letter Conspiracy-all ex- ploits of the "politically-minded "-indicates a disposition to ignore facts far too common in India to-day In speaking of the religious life of India, to ignore absolutely the existence of Sikhism, the virile faith of the most virile people of India, to pass over, with but few words, the mighty fact of Islam, to regard the extraordinary conglom- eration of beliefs, known loosely as Hinduism, as a more or less unified faith, is a measure of the author's knowledge, or shall we say, his inability to look at things as they are. His patronising, patting-on-the-head attitude to Christianity­the verv elements of which he does not understand-is, to use a very mild term, offensive; and though no doubt the author dM not intend to give offence, his use of the words of the Magnificat, in the connection he does use them, displays an incapacity to appreciate that there are things, full of the most sacred associa- tions to others, which should not be lightly and glibly turned in quotation to other purposes. As to mis-statements, not only of opinion, but of bare facts, the book is so full that it would occupy several pages to detail them. One who can write of St. Francis d'Assisi, even though there be a modification added, as "a mad and foolish being", who can describe the Ilbert Bill agitation as "grasping a position of vantage, amounting to monopoly", who can write of the period of Martial Law in the Punjab in the terms employed. and who can gloss over the meaning of the Kali cult, when allied with politics, and the Khilafat movement, puts himself out of court at once as a contributor to a solution of the very difficult problems with which India is faced to-day. The author makes many aspersions, by way of subtle innuendo, upon the British services in India in the past, aspersions without a fraction of truth in them. The present reviewer has known India for over a quarter of a century, and been acquainted with those services, civil, military, police, engineering, canal, forest, educational. (Mr. Paul, by the way, seems hardly to have heard of the gigantic achievements of the Canal De- partment, a department unparalleled in the history of the world). The general characteristic of all of these services has been a desire to serve the interests of the multifarious races of India, loyally and faithfully, mistakenly no doubt at times, to the best of their understanding and ability. India is strewn with the graves of men who have given their lives to India. What the cost has been to hundreds of others only those who have been through the mill themselves know, and they are reticent on the point. It is not possible here to offer suggestions as to how the present problems of India are to be faced. But it is possible to ex- press the hope that those who now seek power will inherit some of the spirit which actuated those who have administered to the needs of India for over a century. The epitaph upon them, whenever the time to write it shall come, will be that they sought not power, but took upon them the burden of responsibility; thev sought not gain, but service. Books of this sort, irritable and designed to irritate, render to India the worst dis- service that can be rendered. India is some- thing more than a stage for bitter polemics; there are 97 to 98 per cent of the people of that continent who are voiceless and voteless in poli- tics, and have little desire to be dragged into the arena. T.P.E.