An Essay on India (Routledge Revivals)

Robert Byron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136459009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1931, Robert Byron's Essay on India evaluates the state of colonial rule in India and analyses the contemporary problems facing the country.

Based upon Byron's travelling experiences within India in 1929 as a correspondent for the Daily Express, the workexplores political factors more fully than in Byron's earlier writings, evaluating the successes and failures of British colonialism in the region.

II

The Indians

1. The Unity of India

BEFORE attempting to discover how well or ill the Englishman in modern India fulfils the responsibility that has descended on him, some effort must be made to realize what India is. Expert opinion holds that, but for a veneer of nationalism engendered by a uniform administration, India is not : “There is no such thing as India,” runs the parrot-cry. In the same breath, the same political dogmatizer will remark on the change that has come over India during the last half-century; thereby implying the existence of an entity subject to change. Point this out, and your informant will reply that the Indian entity, in so far as it may exist, has been created by the English. Here again he confuses the real issue. For the difference between the Indias past and present lies not in the fact that India did not exist before and does now, but in the recent capacity to express and consolidate her existence which she has obtained from the English administration.

The word “India” is primarily a geographical term. Such terms imply not necessarily uniformity within, but an essential separation from the world without. Among the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula, this separation and distinction have always been keenly felt. Thus the whole of Hindu philosophy is woven with references to the Himalayas and the uplands beyond them, seat of uncharted wisdom. The very consciousness of such a mountain barrier, of such an array of glittering peaks strung along the whole of the country’s land frontier, enables every Indian, whatever his creed, tongue, or race, to speak of himself as an Indian, and as one with other Indians of other creeds, tongues, and races. Furthermore, it is only necessary to read the accounts of travellers from beyond those mountains, such as that of Hivan-Tsang in the seventh century, to realize that, throughout the centuries, India has always seemed to outsiders more of a composite entity than ever did, for example, the Roman Empire. The Emperor Babur, in a section of that unique Asiatic document, his memoirs, written about 1519, gives vivid expression to this sentiment :

“The Empire of Hindustan is extensive, populous, and rich. On the east, the south, and even the west, it is bounded by the Great Ocean. On the north it has Kabul, Ghazni and Kandahar. The capital of all Hindustan is Delhi.

“Hindustan is situated in the first, second, and third climates. No part of it is in the foul th. It is a remarkably fine country. It is quite a different world compared with our countries. Its hills and rivers, its forests and plains, its animals and plants, its inhabitants and their languages, its winds and rains, are all of a different nature…. You have no sooner passed Sind than the country, the trees, the stones, the wandering tribes, the manners and customs of the people, are all entirely those of Hindustan. Even the reptiles are different…. The frogs of Hindustan are worthy of notice. Though of the same species of our own, yet they will run six or seven gaz on the face of the water.”

Finally, after a category of animals, flowers, trees, and fruit, the arrogant Central Asian humanist sums up with his famous description :

“The country of Hindustan has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society, of frankly mixing together, or of familiar intercourse. They have no genius, no comprehension of mind, no politeness of manner, no kindness or fellow-feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in planning or executing their handicraft works, no skill or knowledge in design or architecture; they have no horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazars, no baths or colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candlestick…. For their buildings they study neither elegance nor climate, appearance nor regularity. The peasants and the lower classes all go about naked….

“The chief excellency of Hindustan is that it is a large country and has abundance of gold and silver…. Another convenience of Hindustan is that the workmen of every profession and trade are innumerable and without end. For any work, or any employment, there is always a set ready, to whom the same employment and trade have descended from father to son for ages.”

To this description, Sir Lucas King, the most recent editor of Leyden and Erskine’s translation, appends the following note : “Babur’s opinions regarding India are nearly the same as those of most Europeans of the upper class, even at the present day.” Unfortunately he is right, and his note explains much of that harsh absence of sympathy in the English which so disquiets those of them who think otherwise. But like Babur, he too vindicates the conception of India as a single country —a conception which the Emperors Asoka, Harsha, and Babur’s grandson, Akbar, though separated by long intervals of time, did actually invest with political reality. It must be remembered that all the great warriors and rulers of India have at all times sought to emulate this success; and that the recollection of those three reigns, though sometimes exaggerated by nationalist historiographers, has preserved political unity in the Indian consciousness as a proper and desirable condition.

Nevertheless, it must be evident to the blindest supporter of the new aspirations, that India presents a scheme of social, political, philosophical, and artistic disintegration without parallel in human history. The cause of this condition seems, at first sight, not difficult to trace. For ages the more energetic races of the North-west have poured down to the Indian plains through the comparatively easy passes of the Hindu-Kush. In a lesser degree, the west coast has proved hospice to countless traders and refugees from religious persecutions of the Middle East. Yet most countries in the world have received invaders and colonists; and have, in time, assimilated the strangers into their own schemes of life and thought. India has not done so. Her scheme, from before history was written, has been too diffuse. The cause of this is more difficult to determine.

The key to the understanding of this national idiosyncrasy lies with a branch of historical science which has, hitherto, scarcely even been stated, save by the classical genius loci,and has never been developed at all. This science is the calculation of the visual effect of landscape on human activity. In nothing is India more distinguished from the rest of the planet than in her appearance. In general, the country is flat, yet perpetually broken into small, mean formations; nature is suburban; “the country and towns of Hindustan are extremely ugly “, says Babur; “all its towns and lands have a uniform look …”; only the occasional rivers, of vast breadth and volume, tell suddenly of the area that has given them birth. Thus, solid political units have not been induced by the physical geography of the country. Philosophically, it is the same; the root cause of India’s genius for disintegration has sprung from the unknown past with the roots of her thought. And anyone who has pondered the birth of reason on the classic shores of the Æegan, or the birth of Monotheism amid the opalescent sands of the desert, or the birth of music beneath the colourless crags and pines of northern Europe, will know how intimately the development of thought is bound up with visual surroundings. Save in the minute details of animals and flowers, the Indian scene lacks both colour and form to an extent whose totality is almost frightening. The light, steely grey, destroys them. The newly arrived visitor is dazed to find himself moving about a world of two dimensions, from which all hint of recession or mass is absent. Between eleven o’clock and three it is impossible to take a photograph; there is nothing to take; the shadows, where the vertical sun permits them to exist at all, have been destroyed by the light refracted from the ground; and the developed negative displays a bemused blank. Thus, just as the Indian architect has never attempted that play of masses with which the European gains his effects, and has been obliged to develop a novel (and hitherto misunderstood) principle of creating architectural form by an intricate play of millions of small shadows arranged in structural patterns; so likewise the Indian thinker has reared a system of a thousand possibilities, ranging through the whole continuum of the universe, and immensely subdivided in accordance with a profound conviction of human inequality. From this conviction springs that innate sense of propriety, decorum, and acceptance of status, which is the Indian’s most remarkable social gift—a gift which, if ever it be allowed to fructify within a stable political framework, may prove a far greater advantage to the world at large than the spiral hungering after “success” which has enthralled the West and the vassals of Western thought. This loosely built, non-dogmatic system of speculation permits a universal belief that it is every man’s proper function, be he sufficiently endowed with the power of thought, to pursue an individual quest of Reality, and to practise, in order to attain his end, a strict bodily and social discipline whose degrees may vary, but which can never be subordinated to considerations of greater political or social convenience.

Thus we are presented with a country geographically as distinct from the rest of the world as Australia; thickly inhabited and possessing a high degree of civilization; too large ever to have attained permanent political unity before the advent of mechanical transport; too featureless geographically to have split up into a permanent agglomeration of national units; too formless visually to have evolved schemes of rational inquiry such as the Greek, or of monotheistic governance such as the Jewish; and supporting a people or peoples who, for these very reasons, have circumscribed the purpose of being within a framework of religious individualism and of increasingly complex religious custom.

Upon this fluid scene have swept, since history was first written, two chief invaders. First came the Moslems, who, while preserving intact their culture and religion, though not their tongue, have seen all their efforts towards political integration perpetually and permanently frustrated, and who have become as individualist and divided as the Hindus they sought to rule. On their heels followed the English, to give, at long last, actuality to the dream of a permanently unified India. But in estimating the English achievement, one peculiar condition attaching to their advent must always be remembered —a condition which explains their past success and perhaps their inadequacy for the future. For the English have never, owing to the climate, or perhaps to some intuitive lack of sympathy with the country, colonized India. The stream of English efficiency has flowed undiluted from its native source; its exponents have come out from England, and eventually, their task completed, have returned thither; while their children, whether destined for the same service or not, have been sent home at an early age before the Indian scene has affected their characters. Thus India has had no opportunity of exercising her disintegrating genius on her white rulers. And thus, at the same time, those rulers have never been able to transmit their sympathies and understanding to the younger generations who eventually take their place in the commerce or administration of the country. Though an Englishman spend his whole adult life and capacity in India; though his personal genius has found full and satisfying expression there; though he will be miserable, and knows it, on retirement; India never becomes his home. His thoughts are always toward England, a place which, in fact, he detests, and where, far from being “somebody”, he is usually an object of ridicule. And the visitor will observe that he habitually refers to the land which has given him happiness, wealth, and position, and which he regards as an artist regards his pictures, as “this bloody country”. Thus, though he has been the means of giving expression to Indian national unity, he has, of his own choice, no part in that unity. Rather, he tends and upholds it. It is the property of Indians alone, and as such can only be the outcome of long dormant potentiality, a potentiality conjured from the visual and geographical peculiarities of the country with their concomitant modes of thought and their resulting racial and political fluidity. This latter quality may appear, from the European standpoint, the very negation of unity, potential or actual. But when it is considered that over no comparable area in the world are so many peoples of so many races, creeds, and tongues, so inextricably commingled, it is evident that “Indians”, who deserve that appellation by their consciousness of a common fate, may hold the seed of a more exemplary and more permanent unity than the hard, prejudiced, and aggressive states of Europe and America.

Such are the ancient verities which constitute the Indian entity. Round the spirit of that entity the English have begun to erect a concrete body. Meanwhile, the spirit itself has been so reinforced by the ideas of the modern world as to have now become the most potent force alive in the country. And the future history of India will be determined by whether this force, once it ceases to be invigorated by the struggle against foreign repression, will collapse before the eternal instinct towards disintegration, or will exchange, while there is still time, the gaudy nationalism of the moment for a course of true co-operation with the English, and between all Indians, in the completion of the political body. The seed has taken root. And however unreal the hot-gospel of the nationalist fanatic, who seeks with flag and anthem to convince both himself and the stranger that here is a ready-made fascisto-patriotic nation only waiting political emancipation to dazzle the world with an uplifting array of temperance movements, midwifery classes, and athletic triumphs, the means of nourishing the seed have been created in real enough form by the English administration. The administration, in this context, has accomplished two great things. It has provided the country with a lingua franca; so that members of all communities and districts can meet in intelligible discussion. And furthermore it has provided, by its railway system, the means, and by its centralized bureaucracy and legislatures, the necessity, of their doing so. Thus, for the educated classes, India has been transformed, in fact as well as in spirit, into a single country. General tariffs, currency, postal system, and in some cases taxation, combine to increase the sense of national unity among all those who have the intelligence to concern themselves with politics at all.

It is important to distinguish the reality from the unreality of modern Indian nationalism. The unreality, which, even among those who recognize the full benefit of the English administration to the cause of unity, is at once the part-cause and whole weapon of the present discontent, derives from India’s suddenly acquired capacity to regard herself through the eyes of the outside world, and to judge herself by universal standards. On arrival at Karachi, I happened to ask the High Commissioner in Sind what, in his experience of thirty years, was the greatest change that had come over the country. He replied that it was only during and since the War that Indians had come to look on themselves as anything more than people self-contained within their own boundaries, oblivious of outside interest or opinion, and content to achieve contact with the West through the English only. Realizing with a start that the world was looking at them, they have begun to look at themselves. Self-confidence or self-acceptance have given place to self-consciousness.

It is easy to imagine what the Indian must have seen when once he had embarked on this process of historical introspection. While on every side the peoples of the world were busy consolidating and rearranging themselves in accordance with their real or imagined national identities; while it was patent that the narrower and more jealous the identity, the more power and respect it commanded; and while this whole system was accelerated at the end of the War, was imposed from above on Arabs and Jews, and was validated from below by bloody insurrection in Ireland; only the Indian, of all the great nations, could be observed in passive acceptance of a foreign rule and administration, which, though welcome for its material benefits, had been imposed by conquest and maintained by force. In his former isolation, the Indian might or might not have tolerated his position as member of a subject race in perpetuity. But to find himself regarded, in the eyes of the world, as a member of a subject race, on a level, for all political purposes, with the negroes of Africa, was insupportable. His troops had fought in the War and had been largely responsible for the conquest of Mesopotamia; his representatives had attended the Peace Conference. In addition, the other British dominions, already self-governing, were now about to dispense with even the form and letter of English authority. Yet still he, product of an older civilization than the European and endowed with intelligence above the common lot, but encased and damned within a coloured skin, was consigned to the whims of an alien bureaucracy and denied all effective share in shaping the course of his national destiny. Throughout the Western world, national self-determination was being preached as the highest purpose of humanity. And was not the world being made safe, and had not Indian troops helped to make it safe, for democracy? Yet there seemed small hope to the Indian that his country would be permitted a share in this general distribution of political advantage. Dyarchy was tried. Grudgingly bestowed, it was grudgingly accepted, and did little to obliterate the prevailing sense of national humiliation.

This reflected sense of national identity had been growing, among a small minority of the intelligentsia, for the past three decades. The first national Congress assembled in 1885 at the instance of Mr. A. 0. Hume, a retired civil servant. Soon after, the Bengal terrorists took the initiative in violent outrage. The result of the Russo-Japanese War was received with the wildest acclamation, as showing for the first time since the eighteenth century that Europe in conflict with Asia was not necessarily invincible. Five years later the question of the admission of Indians, on equal terms with white settlers, to British colonies, had become acute. But it was only during the War and after it that the desire for recognition, not only by the English, but also by, and because of, the world in general, of the Indians’ right to an effective national identity in accordance with modern ideas, became urgent and obtained the support of the whole educated class throughout the country, irrespective of racial or religious differences.

Superficially, the chief result of this widespread movement has been to infect the educated population with an acute distemper of touchiness and vanity; to engender a disregard for written or spoken truth, repellent in its completeness; and, worst of all, to furnish the rising generation with a false and contemptible set of materialistic standards, by adhering to which it may hope, as it thinks, to stand well with the Americanized Western world. But such disabilities were perhaps inevitable on closer contact with a grossly imperfect but morally irresistible civilization. For on probing beneath the surface, it is apparent that this same movement has actually given forcible, if sometimes incoherent, expression to the real unity of the country, to the consciousness of which the traveller, as he travels, becomes gradually aware, that India, despite her system of racial, religious, and social disintegration, possesses a soul and personality as tangible and definite as a jury of English grocers or a row of English elms. If the false standards induced by the false ideology of the modern world are allowed to pass, and this real emotion, born with the trees and flowers and scents of the pallid Indian soil, is preserved and purified in its new and positive form, then, and then only, will the struggle and misery of recent years not have been wasted.

Corollary to this over-sensitiveness to Western opinion is the present almost universal belief that the English government and the English people are engaged in an active propaganda to discredit the Indian races in the eyes of the outside world, and to prove them unfit, both physically and mentally, for the bestowal of political autonomy. During my voyage from Karachi to Bombay, while the rest of the ship’s passengers were staggering out of the saloon to be sick over their shirt-fronts, I came into conversation with a young and widely travelled Parsi, who informed me, to my great astonishment, that of course he and every one else knew that Mother India had been published under the auspices of the English government. When I tried to recall for his information the extreme distress occasioned by that book’s appearance in official c...