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Title: India and the War (March, 1915)
Author: Murray, George Gilbert Aim (1866-1957)
Date of first publication: 1915
   [Address to Indian students]
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Faith, War, and Policy.
   Addresses and Essays on the European War.
   Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, August 1917
Date first posted: 14 October 2011
Date last updated: 14 October 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #870

This ebook was produced by: James Wright, Jen Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This ebook was produced from images generously made
available by the Internet Archive/Columbia University Libraries






IV

INDIA AND THE WAR[1]

(_March, 1915_)


LORD HALDANE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--

My task to-night is anything but an easy one. I wish to speak to one
half of my audience only, though I am more than pleased that the other
half should overhear all I say. I want to speak to the Indian
students, and to speak to them as frankly as possible. It would be
easy and very pleasant to expatiate on the achievements of the Indian
troops in the war and the loyalty shown by the Indian people to the
Empire. But I know that, if I did so, some Indians would be tempted to
smile sardonically, and suspect that we have taken this loyalty too
much as our due, as a mere testimonial to our good government. "We are
loyal," an Indian friend of mine once said to me; "but our loyalty is
to India, not England." He spoke only for himself, and I do not feel
sure he was right, even for himself. Loyalty is not a thing that is
owed. It is a thing that grows, or does not grow. When people have
been comrades and worked together for a long time,--even with
occasional quarrels,--there rises normally among decent human beings a
bond of trust and a mutual expectation. Now, I believe that between
India and England that bond exists. We have had a long experience
together and mostly--mostly--we have not failed one another. In your
times of need, in plague or famine, you confidently expect us to
help, and you find even our roughest subalterns and haughtiest
officials working their fingers to the bone to help your people. In
our times of need--well, you have not often had the full chance of
showing what you could do. It is one of your grievances, and one with
which I warmly sympathize. But now, when we are threatened to our very
life, you have helped. You have given us more than we ever dared
expect. That message of the Indian kings and princes which Mr. Roberts
read out in the House of Commons will not easily be forgotten.

We shall, I believe, win this war. India will share our glory. The
same battles will be emblazoned on the banners of Indian and British
regiments. But as you share our glory you will share our dangers; and
it is a time of extreme gravity that fronts us when we look into the
future. Before the war we were disturbed by an uncertain and
treacherous neighbour. After the war we shall have a deadly enemy. It
seems to me that the irony of history has been at work with Great
Britain. As a nation we emphatically believe in peace. We are a people
of traders and manufacturers who live by peace. Our ideals and
philosophies are all peaceful. Yet here we stand, in the centre of an
enormous war. Again, we believe in freedom, democracy, government by
consent. We have largely been the teachers of those ideals to the
world. And here we have climbed or slipped, steered or drifted, into
the administration of a vast empire where we are governing dozens of
other races by a system imposed from without and not dependent on the
consent of the governed. No doubt we govern well. Some of you will
have criticisms to make, but on the whole most people admit that we
bring to the art of government unrivalled experience and a great
tradition of public spirit. But, granted that we govern well, we are
still governing from outside, not by means of free institutions, and
not in the spirit that we normally consider British. And more, we do
not see--I believe no one in the world sees--how any other method of
government is possible, except, indeed, as a goal to work towards by
progressive and careful change. That was the policy laid down by the
Liberal statesmen of the nineteenth century, and to that I hope we
shall always hold.

What is the end to be?--not now, but hereafter, when you and I are in
our graves to east or west of the great ocean, and the disputes, and
grievances, and schemes of policy that divided us are forgotten or
only remembered as curious puzzles for future historians to make sense
of. Is the great Empire--I wish there was another word for it--of
which you and I are part, for which your brothers and mine are
shedding their blood together in Flanders, in Egypt, on the shores of
the Persian Gulf, to grow to be indeed a Commonwealth, the greatest
community of free men and women that the world has seen? Or is it to
fail, to end in bloodshed and ruin? Or again to establish and
stereotype itself as one more in the great world-list of despotic
empires, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium, which have sometimes lasted
so long and passed away so unregretted?

That is the problem on which you and we are set. Neither of us can
reject it. From the ends of the earth two utterly different
civilizations, which yet were closely akin in their remote origins,
have been caught again by the process of world-history and set
together to this enormous task. Of course we may cut the problem: we
may rush upon failure by mere fratricide. We may shirk it by
abandoning our deepest ideals. We may, by great labour and heroic
patience, by constant hard thinking and facing of facts, solve it
successfully by building up the great Commonwealth of which I spoke.

I do not underrate the difficulties that lie before us or the
differences that separate us. One of them was brought home to me
suddenly and vividly some time ago. There was a meeting to discuss our
Government's policy in Persia; one speaker defending the Government
suggested that our Ministers, knowing that Germany was ready to spring
at the throat of her rivals at the first sign of difference between
them, thought the danger of disintegration to Persia not too high a
price to pay for European peace. The plea was I will not say accepted,
but considered reasonable by the meeting. Then there rose an
Indian--not a Parsee. He spoke quietly, not like a foreigner or one
speaking a language strange to him. He seemed essentially one of us.
And with an emotion that vibrated through the room he said that to him
and his, European peace was as dust in the balance compared with the
disintegration of Persia. Many of those who applauded him must have
done so with a certain sense of guilt, a feeling that Persia had been
to them a remote, unknown, half-civilized place which might, in a
great crisis, be legitimately sacrificed to the peace of Europe. We
must try to feel as an Indian would about such things as this; or at
least to understand how he would feel.

We shall have clashes of that sort, clashes arising chiefly from facts
of geography. We shall have interminable clashes of habit and national
character; clashes of sentiment. An instance is our present war with
Turkey. There has been a strain there, and both sides have met it
with great forbearance. Indian Moslems have to look on while we batter
down the door of a great Moslem empire. We, because of our relations
to you, have stood a great deal more from Turkey than we should
naturally be inclined to stand. Yes: as the Germans have pointed out,
there are between you and us the seeds of disunion. Of course there
are, any one can see them. But there are seeds of brotherhood as well.
And it does not follow that seeds of evil need grow more than other
seeds. There is no nation so uniform, no small society, no band of
friends, which has not seeds of disunion in it. It rests with men
themselves, with their good-will and strength of character, whether
amid the million seeds which life scatters, one kind or another comes
to maturity. We must see to it that the seeds of disunion die while
the others ripen.

Again, we shall have clashes arising out of our differences of
religion. The situation needs toleration, forbearance: yes, but it
needs more than that. It needs active mutual appreciation. If
Christian and Moslem, Christian and Hindu, are to form a real
Commonwealth, it is not enough for one of them to say of the others,
"Such-and-such is a good fellow in spite of his religion." You must
see that he is good because of his religion. There is some inherent
religious quality, some piety, or devotion, which comes out in one
religion as in another, and deserves respect. There are doubtless also
some special qualities which are fostered specially by each separate
religion. I speak from a point of view which some of you will share,
some not; though I have heard a missionary say nearly as much. To me
it seems to the last degree improbable that any one religion, or any
one form of culture, has the monopoly of truth, and I expect
Christianity to be improved by contact and comparison of thought with
other great religions.

And further: if this is true in religion, it must be true also in
civilization. Look at any single civilization as it now exists. Look
at it with plenty of common sense, but also a little imagination.
England's is a fine civilization; it is both stable and progressive.
Almost every department of it, if you ask the experts, is demonstrably
improving.

Yet look through England. Go to the hotels and boarding-houses and
notice the people you see; walk the streets of the great manufacturing
towns; go to the places of amusement, the theatres and music-halls,
and observe the audiences. Is it a civilization with which one can
feel content? Is it a civilization to impose, untempered, upon the
world? Clearly not. And your own civilization--I will not be impolite
to it. I will leave you yourselves to think it over; to ask if it is
satisfactory, if it is free from characteristics that fill you with
discouragement and even some sense of shame, if it can possibly hold
up its head as an equal among the great moving forces of the modern
world except by drawing abundantly on the enlightenment of the West? I
do not know what your various answers will be. But for my own part I
believe that the true development of this vast heterogeneous mass of
strong life which we call the British Empire will involve utilizing
all the different elements and contributions which our various races
and societies can bring to the common stock. The process is already
going on. It lies with us to make it into a good process or a bad. It
is very easy to choose the bad and cheap and vulgar things in one
another's habits. The way to do that is to begin by despising one
another and looking out for the contemptible things. If we respect one
another, we shall tend more to notice and cultivate what is good.

One great permanent difficulty--you see all my speech is made up of
difficulties--is the vastness and variety of our respective nations.
Many a time it must happen that an Englishman and an Indian, talking
as friends over their national differences, feel that if the matter
lay with them, if they too were their respective nations, it would not
be hard to come to an understanding. But behind each is a trail of
innumerable human beings, utterly unlike the two supposed principals.
I can think of many pairs of sensible people who would do for my
purpose; several statesmen, a great many writers and historians. But
imagine, for example, Lord Haldane and the late Mr. Gokhale. Clearly
they would understand each other: they might or might not agree on
some special point, but the basis of common action and agreement and
mutual respect would be there. But as you look at England, doubtless
you see behind Lord Haldane masses of people less understanding and
less sympathetic, cheerful, ignorant subalterns, common soldiers who
talk contemptuously about "black men"; determined old gentlemen, most
falsely called "imperialists," who cry out that India was taken by the
sword and must be held by the sword. You see in your indignant
imagination the squalid crowds that reel out of our public houses and
music-halls and race-courses, and ask with secret rage if these are
your born masters; if these are the people who claim by blood and
birth and colour to be your inherent superiors! Is that overstated?
No; I think not; though we must always remember in a well-ordered
modern State how little the baser elements of a population direct its
policy. But there they are. And on the other side, behind Mr.
Gokhale--you can imagine better than I can describe the extraordinary
combination of peoples, of different habits and ethics, different
religions and superstitions, different levels of culture from almost
the highest to the lowest. "One nation governing another": put at its
crudest, such a principle implies putting the whole of one of these
vast, incoherent, heterogeneous masses on top of the other to govern
it. Any such process would be clearly wrong. It is a principle which
even the stoutest, old-fashioned imperialist has abandoned. The only
possible plan is, by one method or another, to select out of both
masses those capable of governing best, and of best understanding and
learning from one another.

For the rest, we in our home politics have a large task before us in
levelling up the conditions of our poorer classes to something
worthier of our place in the world, in material conditions, in
education, in outlook on the whole of life. Our task will be heavy;
but a task of the same character lies before you, and yours will be
colossal. You have a far larger field to plough; you have to cut your
way through a far deeper and wilder jungle. To raise the level of life
in Great Britain--in India: the more they are both raised to the level
of their best people, the more they will be ready to understand and
help one another, the more all the unnecessary difficulties between
the two parties will tend to disappear.

"Bande Mataram": "Hail, Mother!" I attended lately an Indian dinner
where that Nationalist motto met one's eye at every turn. You will
work in devotion to your Mother. It is well that you should. And no
one who knows you can doubt that you have among you the spirit of
martyrs. That is a fine thing; in some emergencies of life an
indispensable thing. But there is something far finer, and that is the
spirit of a statesman. A martyr sacrifices himself rather than be
false to some principle. A statesman, without thinking of himself one
way or another, when he finds some evil or dangerous state of affairs
sees how to make it safe or good. Let us serve our Mothers, you yours
and we ours, so far as we can in the spirit of statesmen.

But is there not--I put this question quite practically--a Greater
Mother whose children we all are, whose day is coming, but not yet
come? Cannot you and we work together in the service of this Greater
Commonwealth, which is also the service of humanity? We _must_ be
together. I can see no future for an isolated India; no happy future
for a Great Britain which is content to boast that she holds India
merely by the sword. Working together, we have formidable obstacles to
face, but we have wonderful and unique gifts to contribute. Nations
are apt to see vividly enough one another's faults, but they would do
better to remember, as J. S. Mill puts it, their "reciprocal
superiorities." I will not try now to define them. My own respect for
England--if for the moment I may speak as one who has but little pure
English blood in his veins, being an Australian Irishman of Scotch
descent--has grown steadily with experience. But I will not dwell on
special virtues of England, nor yet on those of India; on your
wonderful intellectual aptitude and readiness for fine thought; on
your great past which is still living; on your people's characteristic
aloofness from the vulgarity of modern Western life; on the qualities
shown in your Moslem architecture, your Hindu religious thought. But
here I would venture, if I may, to suggest a caution. Some writers, I
know, hold up for your admiration and example that famous episode in
the Bhagavad Gita in which even the noise of battle has to wait
unregarded while the stream of philosophic thinking runs its course.
That spirit is a fine element in life; but, if I may for once give
advice, I will say: Beware of letting it be more than an element. To
an Indian who wishes to make India great I would say, Beware of losing
yourself in reverie while others are fighting the battles of life.
Beware altogether of dreams and dreamlike passions. Face facts; get
knowledge; cultivate common sense; learn to trust and be trusted;
serve your community. Do not lose yourselves in admiration of your own
past or your own racial peculiarities; think of your future, and be
not afraid to uproot from your culture every element which prevents
India taking her place among free and progressive nations.

You need never be afraid that your own special qualities will not
remain and exercise their valuable influence on the world. You will
teach us and we you. And other nations will be near, bringing their
help and their lessons: America not far off with her generous
swiftness of movement and her loving-kindness towards all in
suffering; not very far, perhaps, even our present enemies with their
great powers of discipline, of self-devotion, and of remorseless
effectiveness. Let us preserve our national characters. Let us use our
feelings of patriotism and nationalism to inspire us and to give
strength to our hands; but at the back of our minds let us always
remember our wider Commonwealth, our Greater Mother, and think of the
time when we brother nations may bring our various gifts to her feet
and say together our "Bande Mataram."


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Address to Indian students.]




[End of India and the War, by Gilbert Murray]
