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SITUATION IN INDIA.
HL Deb 07 July 1921 vol 45 cc1017-281017
LORD SYDENHAM rose to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he can state what steps the Government of India is taking to protect the lives and property of Europeans and loyal Indians in country districts where anxiety prevails. The noble Lord said: My Lords the Council of the European Association at Calcutta has lately addressed the Government of Bengal, drawing attention to what it calls the "feeling of insecurity existing among Europeans," and it has begged the Government of Bengal that "steps be taken to protect the lives and property of law-abiding Europeans and loyal Indians, and so establish law and order that boycott by intimidation may become impossible." The immediate cause of that very strong appeal was that Gandhi's agents were travelling all over the division of Chittagong and endeavouring to incite hatred and contempt of Europeans among Indians. The European Association stated its belief that this propaganda work has taken 1018place with the knowledge of the Government and that the Government was reluctant to do anything which might be misrepresented as repression, for fear of prejudicing the success of the recent reforms.
The European Association is certainly not an alarmist body. On the contrary, I think it was extraordinarily slow in realising what the inevitable effects of the policy and the methods of the Secretary of State must be, of the results of which this House received plain warnings, but which have developed much more rapidly than even the greatest pessimist among us expected at the time. I therefore beg your Lordships to believe that the Association did not make this strong appeal without more than adequate reasons, and it is those reasons which induced me to put down the Question which I ask this afternoon.
India is so vast that you cannot possibly form a really true opinion of the situation in India as a whole at any time, and the public here never hears a fraction of what is happening in the country districts. In the large towns, when a riot occurs, we are immediately informed of it, and also of the number of casualties. We have two such reports, and very serious reports, to-day, from Aligarh and Madras, but in some of the country districts there has been quite a considerable loss of Indian lives, and we in this country have never known that it had occurred. The unhappy residents of Chittagong have lately described the position in which they now find themselves, and they say this:— The trade of the place has come to a standstill, and foodstuffs are selling in the bazaar at famine prices. The banks are doing no business, and co-operators with the Government live in daily terror of assaults. The town is picketed with non-co-operators, and law-abiding citizens are prevented from attending to their daily work by constant abuse, intimidation, and threats of violence to their womenfolk. This is called nonviolent non-co-operation. That is a picture of flagrant lawlessness, and the residents ask: "When will Chittagong be reconquered by the British Government?"
And precisely the same conditions as those prevail in other parts of India. A European writes from Tippera:— Not a bungalow here has a servant, and we are having to cook our own food. The bazaar people 'sill not sell us food unless we pay double the price a native pays. For an Englishwoman to have to cook in the heat of India is really a most serious hardship. Your Lordships are aware of what has happened in many of the tea gardens of Assam and Bihar, where the poor, ignorant coolies have been induced to trek to the railway stations, abandoning or selling at absurd prices all their small possessions. At the stations they squatted without any food, and at length the Government provided them with passes to their native villages, where, of course, they will find themselves absolutely stranded. Cholera broke out among them, and between 300 and 400 of them have already died, while the survivors will spread the disease to the villages where they have already gone. The idea of these senseless and cruel proceedings—which are exactly the same as those which Gandhi tried and carried out in Natal some years ago—is, of course, to destroy the tea industry, which we have built up to the very great advantage of India.
One object of Gandhi's movement is to obtain control of the domestic servants, so as to be able to withdraw them whenever he chooses. In some cases this has been accomplished, and the position of our countrymen and countrywomen is becoming almost impossible. The European in India, as any of your Lordships who have been there must know, is absolutely dependent upon his servants, and during the Mutiny there were numerous touching instances of the lives of our people being saved by the devotion of their servants at the risk of their own lives. Gandhi is making great efforts to induce the domestic servants to hate their employers, and to leave them helpless whenever he chooses to give the word of command.
There are also parts of India now where the position of Europeans is becoming almost intolerable. Our women dare not go out without escorts, and they are obliged to have arms constantly by their side. Most officials and non-officials are liable in many eases to insult in open day, while in parts, where a few years ago you could go in perfect freedom, life is no longer safe. Almost the only places in which the European now enjoys freedom from insult are the Native States, where the chiefs have declined to give up their authority. In some parts of India the district officers can no longer tour because they are deprived of supplies, and they are therefore cut off from their people, with the object of rendering them contemptible in the eyes of their people, whom they have been helping to rule. In Rangoon, as a result of the Caliphate agitation, the municipal engineer was dragged out of his car, and his face was smeared with mud. The Burmans have no more to do with the Caliphate question than the Tibetans have to do with Irish Home Rule, but the great artificial agitation which has been set up in Burma, being carried there from India, has so much alarmed the Government of India that, as I said the other day, it suddenly changed its mind and demanded the instant application of the Government of India Act to Burma.
The recent outbreak at Rajshahi gaol was preceded by reports that Gandhi was going to pay- a visit, and that British rule had ceased. The Government of Bengal reported on this very serious incident, and they said the situation was saved by the European district officers, who displayed "conspicuous energy, resource and activity." Within a very few years there will be no fearless British officers to deal in that way with situations, which will then be far more serious. The Government of Bengal went on to say that this outbreak was the outcome of the unrest and want of respect for established authority which have been so widely spread by Mr. Gandhi's propaganda. But all that is the result really of a Government which has ceased to rule. And that is a condition which, all through the East, very quickly brings its own nemesis.
The predecessor of the noble Earl had a specific for dealing with Gandhi's Satyagraha movement, which has developed since into the non-co-operation movement. Speaking, on behalf of the Government, in this House on July 19 of last year, he said:— Do not interfere too hastily or too violently with an agitation of this nature. Let it kill itself as, in time, it will. The noble Earl must have learned since then that this movement has developed into far greater dimensions than it had at that time, and that the agitation now seems as if it might before long pass beyond the control of the Government. The fact is that this movement of Gandhi's is a new feature in our experience in India. It is an experience which the Government of India have never quite had before, and the Government of India may have underrated it, or they may have regarded it as too serious and too dangerous to resist.
We have never yet had an Indian leader who was accepted as of Divine origin, and now there are Many millions of Indians who believe that Gandhi can raise men from the dead by a few words, and that he is already the ruler of India. I MU afraid that the Viceroy's five interviews with him will greatly strengthen that belief among the ignorant masses of India. The success of those interviews may be judged by the statement which Gandhi subsequently sent to the Press. In it he said:— The Ali brothers, like me, continue wilfully to break the law of sedition, and therefore to court arrest. Sooner or later, and that during this year, if we can carry the country with us, we must bring about a situation when the Government must arrest us or grant the people's demands. That means that Gandhi believes that if be and the Ali brothers are arrested, there will be risings all over India, and that he will be able to say that that is entirely the fault of the repressive measures of the Government. On the other hand, if they are not arrested and are allowed to carry on their present propaganda in the way in which it is now being conducted, the time will come when our position in India will become practically impossible.
In our time I know of no parallel to the Gandhi movement, except the remarkable career of the Mahdi in the Sudan, and the Mahdi's career cost the Sudan tens of thousands of lives. Already Gandhi is responsible for the loss of many more Indian lives than was caused in suppressing the most dangerous rebellion that India has ever seen.
I must warn your Lordships that our authority in India is steadily waning at the present time, and that there is no other authority which can possibly stand in its place. Gandhi's plan of making life impossible to Europeans in India is much more dangerous than a rising, which can always be met face to face and put down, I could give your Lordships numerous instances to show what white men and women have to endure in India, where the object is to reduce their position to that of a beleaguered garrison cut off from necessary supplies and services.
The European Association has made four specific suggestions which, as the noble Earl has seen them, I will not quote. I do not for a moment expect him to give any details of the steps which are taken or 1022to be taken, but I hope he will be able to say that the Government of. India realises the growing gravity' f the situation, understands where the stirring up of race hatred among the ignorant and fanatical masses must lead us, and is preparing to take steps to save the situation before it is too late. In parts of India now crime and corruption are steadily growing, and intimidation is rampant, as it is in different degrees in Ireland, in Egypt, and in Palestine, where also minorities are doing their best to attack the British Empire. We have even seen lately an attempt to produce a sort of terror in this country.
Before long the masses of India will acutely feel the effects of the lapse of the authority which has given them security and order in the past, and will also feel the growing inefficiency of Government in many of its Departments. Believe me my Lords, they will unhesitatingly throw the whole blame of this upon us, and then they will demand, as the extremists are now doing, that British rule in India should be brought to an end. Then, as has happened in all the long centuries of Indian history where rule has lapsed, there will come a chaos which, in my opinion, will be deeper and darker than the chaos which followed the collapse of the Mogul Empire. I beg to ask my Question.
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