Part 20

“What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal about it; try it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly trustworthy criterion, and there is scarcely the colour of money in it. The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for working expenses, railway fares, and stationery—the mere pasteboard and scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere financial inanition.”

“But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,” Pagett insisted.

“That is precisely what I _do_ deny. The native side of the movement is the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have received an English education.”

“Surely that’s a very important class. Its members must be the ordained leaders of popular thought.”

“Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations, they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship’s clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart he may be, is not the colonel. You see, the writer class in India has never till now aspired to anything like command. It wasn’t allowed to. The Indian gentleman, for thousands of years past, has resembled Victor Hugo’s noble:

“Un vrai sire Chatelain Laisse ecrire Le vilain. Sa main digne Quand il signe Egratigne Le velin.”

And the little _egratignures_ he most likes to make have been scored pretty deeply by the sword.“

“But this is childish and mediæval nonsense!”

“Precisely; and from your, or rather our, point of view the pen _is_ mightier than the sword. In this country it’s otherwise. The fault lies in our Indian balances, not yet adjusted to civilised weights and measures.”

“Well, at all events, this literary class represent the natural aspirations and wishes of the people at large, though it may not exactly lead them, and, in spite of all you say, Orde, I defy you to find a really sound English Radical who would not sympathise with those aspirations.”

Pagett spoke with some warmth, and he had scarcely ceased when a well-appointed dog-cart turned into the compound gates, and Orde rose, saying:

“Here is Edwards, the Master of the Lodge I neglect so diligently, come to talk about accounts, I suppose.”

As the vehicle drove up under the porch Pagett also rose, saying with the trained effusion born of much practice:

“But this is also _my_ friend, my old and valued friend, Edwards. I’m delighted to see you. I knew you were in India, but not exactly where.”

“Then it isn’t accounts, Mr. Edwards,” said Orde cheerily.

“Why, no, sir; I heard Mr. Pagett was coming, and as our works were closed for the New Year I thought I would drive over and see him.”

“A very happy thought. Mr. Edwards, you may not know, Orde, was a leading member of our Radical Club at Switchton when I was beginning political life, and I owe much to his exertions. There’s no pleasure like meeting an old friend, except, perhaps, making a new one. I suppose, Mr. Edwards, you stick to the good old cause?”

“Well, you see, sir, things are different out here. There’s precious little one can find to say against the Government, which was the main of our talk at home, and them that do say things are not the sort o’ people a man who respects himself would like to be mixed up with. There are no politics, in a manner of speaking, in India. It’s all work.”

“Surely you are mistaken, my good friend. Why, I have come all the way from England just to see the working of this great National movement.”

“I don’t know where you’re going to find the nation as moves, to begin with, and then you’ll be hard put to it to find what they are moving about. It’s like this, sir,” said Edwards, who had not quite relished being called “my good friend.” “They haven’t got any grievance—nothing to hit with, don’t you see, sir; and then there’s not much to hit against, because the Government is more like a kind of general Providence, directing an old-established state of things, than that at home, where there’s something new thrown down for us to fight about every three months.”

“You are probably, in your workshops, full of English mechanics, out of the way of learning what the masses think.”

“I don’t know so much about that. There are four of us English foremen, and between seven and eight hundred native fitters, smiths, carpenters, painters, and such like.”

“And they are full of the Congress, of course?”

“Never hear a word of it from year’s end to year’s end, and I speak the talk, too. But I wanted to ask how things are going on at home—old Tyler and Brown and the rest?”

“We will speak of them presently, but your account of the indifference of your men surprises me almost as much as your own. I fear you are a backslider from the good old doctrine, Edwards.” Pagett spoke as one who mourned the death of a near relative.

“Not a bit, sir, but I should be if I took up with a parcel of babus, pleaders, and schoolboys, as never did a day’s work in their lives, and couldn’t if they tried. And if you was to poll us English railway-men, mechanics, tradespeople, and the like of that all up and down the country from Peshawur to Calcutta, you would find us mostly in a tale together. And yet you know we’re the same English you pay some respect to at home at ’lection time, and we have the pull o’ knowing something about it.”

“This is very curious, but you will let me come and see you, and perhaps you will kindly show me the railway works, and we will talk things over at leisure. And about all old friends and old times,” added Pagett, detecting with quick insight a look of disappointment in the mechanic’s face.

Nodding briefly to Orde, Edwards mounted his dog-cart and drove off.

“It’s very disappointing,” said the Member to Orde, who, while his friend discoursed with Edwards, had been looking over a bundle of sketches drawn on gray paper in purple ink, brought to him by a _Chuprassee_.

“Don’t let it trouble you, old chap,” said Orde sympathetically. “Look here a moment, here are some sketches by the man who made the carved-wood screen you admired so much in the dining-room, and wanted a copy of, and the artist himself is here too.”

“A native?” said Pagett.

“Of course,” was the reply, “Bishen Singh is his name, and he has two brothers to help him. When there is an important job to do, the three go into partnership, but they spend most of their time and all their money in litigation over an inheritance, and I’m afraid they are getting involved. Thoroughbred Sikhs of the old rock, obstinate, touchy, bigoted, and cunning, but good men for all that. Here is Bishen Singh—shall we ask _him_ about the Congress?”

But Bishen Singh, who approached with a respectful salaam, had never heard of it, and he listened with a puzzled face and obviously feigned interest to Orde’s account of its aims and objects, finally shaking his vast white turban with great significance when he learned that it was promoted by certain pleaders named by Orde, and by educated natives. He began with laboured respect to explain how he was a poor man with no concern in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound of which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as he denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with words who filched his field from him, the men whose backs were never bowed in honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the Bengali. He and one of his brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there, had Bengali carpenters given to them as assistants.

“Those carpenters!” said Bishen Singh. “Black apes were more efficient workmates, and as for the Bengali babu—tchick!” The guttural click needed no interpretation, but Orde translated the rest, while Pagett gazed with interest at the wood-carver.

“He seems to have a most illiberal prejudice against the Bengali,” said the M. P.

“Yes, it’s very sad that for ages outside Bengal there should be so bitter a prejudice. Pride of race, which also means race-hatred, is the plague and curse of India and it spreads far.” Orde pointed with his riding-whip to the large map of India on the verandah wall.

“See! I begin with the North,” said he. “There’s the Afghan, and, as a highlander, he despises all the dwellers in Hindustan—with the exception of the Sikh, whom he hates as cordially as the Sikh hates him. The Hindu loathes Sikh and Afghan, and the Rajput—that’s a little lower down across this yellow blot of desert—has a strong objection, to put it mildly, to the Maratha, who, by the way, poisonously hates the Afghan. Let’s go North a minute. The Sindhi hates everybody I’ve mentioned. Very good, we’ll take less warlike races. The cultivator of Northern India domineers over the man in the next province, and the Behari of the North-West ridicules the Bengali. They are all at one on that point. I’m giving you merely the roughest possible outlines of the facts, of course.”

Bishen Singh, his clean-cut nostrils still quivering, watched the large sweep of the whip as it travelled from the frontier, through Sindh, the Punjab and Rajputana, till it rested by the valley of the Jumna.

“Hate—eternal and inextinguishable hate,” concluded Orde, flicking the lash of the whip across the large map from East to West as he sat down. “Remember Canning’s advice to Lord Granville, ‘Never write or speak of Indian things without looking at a map.’”

Pagett opened his eyes; Orde resumed. “And the race-hatred is only a part of it. What’s really the matter with Bishen Singh is class-hatred, which, unfortunately, is even more intense and more widely spread. That’s one of the little drawbacks of caste, which some of your recent English writers find an impeccable system.”

The wood-carver was glad to be recalled to the business of his craft, and his eyes shone as he received instructions for a carved wooden doorway for Pagett, which he promised should be splendidly executed and despatched to England in six months. It is an irrelevant detail, but in spite of Orde’s reminders, fourteen months elapsed before the work was finished. Business over, Bishen Singh hung about, reluctant to take his leave, and at last joining his hands and approaching Orde with bated breath and whispering humbleness, said he had a petition to make. Orde’s face suddenly lost all trace of expression. “Speak on, Bishen Singh,” said he, and the carver in a whining tone explained that his case against his brothers was fixed for hearing before a native judge, and—here he dropped his voice still lower till he was summarily stopped by Orde, who sternly pointed to the gate with an emphatic Begone!

Bishen Singh, showing but little sign of discomposure, salaamed respectfully to the friends and departed.

Pagett looked inquiry; Orde, with complete recovery of his usual urbanity, replied: “It’s nothing, only the old story: he wants his case to be tried by an English judge—they all do that—but when he began to hint that the other side were in improper relations with the native judge I had to shut him up. Gunga Ram, the man he wanted to make insinuations about, may not be very bright; but he’s as honest as daylight on the bench. But that’s just what one can’t get a native to believe.”

“Do you really mean to say these people prefer to have their cases tried by English judges?”

“Why, certainly.”

Pagett drew a long breath. “I didn’t know that before.” At this point a phaeton entered the compound, and Orde rose with “Confound it, there’s old Rasul Ali Khan come to pay one of his tiresome duty-calls. I’m afraid we shall never get through our little Congress discussion.”

Pagett was an almost silent spectator of the grave formalities of a visit paid by a punctilious old Mahommedan gentleman to an Indian official; and was much impressed by the distinction of manner and fine appearance of the Mahommedan landholder. When the exchange of polite banalities came to a pause, he expressed a wish to learn the courtly visitor’s opinion of the National Congress.

Orde reluctantly interpreted, and with a smile which even Mahommedan politeness could not save from bitter scorn, Rasul Ali Khan intimated that he knew nothing about it and cared still less. It was a kind of talk encouraged by the Government for some mysterious purpose of its own, and for his own part he wondered and held his peace.

Pagett was far from satisfied with this, and wished to have the old gentleman’s opinion on the propriety of managing all Indian affairs on the basis of an elective system.

Orde did his best to explain, but it was plain the visitor was bored and bewildered. Frankly, he didn’t think much of committees; they had a Municipal Committee at Lahore and had elected a menial servant, an orderly, as a member. He had been informed of this on good authority, and after that committees had ceased to interest him. But all was according to the rule of Government, and, please God, it was all for the best.

“What an old fossil it is!” cried Pagett, as Orde returned from seeing his guest to the door; “just like some old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain. What does he really think of the Congress after all, and of the elective system?”

“Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the most masterful and powerful minority in the country, to contemplate their own extinction with joy. The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists, who are many, and the landed proprietors, also of Hindu race, are frightened and put out by this election business and by the importance we have bestowed on lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have, up to now, been in abject submission to them. They say little, but after all they are the most important faggots in the great bundle of communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for their estrangement. They have controlled the land.”

“But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the principle is accepted in your centres, don’t you know, it is bound to spread, and these important—ah’m—people of yours would learn it like the rest. I see no difficulty at all,” and the smooth lips closed with the complacent snap habitual to Pagett, M. P., the “man of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows.”

Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.

“The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn from scores of municipalities, others have had to be summarily suppressed, and, outside the Presidency towns, the actual work done has been badly performed. This is of less moment, perhaps—it only sends up the local death-rates—than the fact that the public interest in municipal elections, never very strong, has waned, and is waning, in spite of careful nursing on the part of Government servants.”

“Can you explain this lack of interest?” said Pagett, putting aside the rest of Orde’s remarks.

“You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every thousand of our population can spell. Then they are infinitely more interested in religion and caste questions than in any sort of politics. When the business of mere existence is over, their minds are occupied by a series of interests, pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like, based on centuries of tradition and usage. You, perhaps, find it hard to conceive of people absolutely devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the daily paper, and the printed speech are unknown, and you would describe their life as blank. That’s a profound mistake. You are in another land, another century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family merely, and not the community, is all-important. The average Oriental cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His life, too, is more complete and self-sufficing and less sordid and low-thoughted than you might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to forget that it is the man that is elemental, not the book.

“The corn and the cattle are all my care, And the rest is the will of God.”

Why should such folk look up from their immemorially appointed round of duty and interests to meddle with the unknown and fuss with voting-papers? How would you, atop of all your interests, care to conduct even one-tenth of your life according to the manners and customs of the Papuans, let’s say? That’s what it comes to.”

“But if they won’t take the trouble to vote, why do you anticipate that Mahommedans, proprietors, and the rest would be crushed by majorities of them?”

Again Pagett disregarded the closing sentence.

“Because, though the landholders would not move a finger on any purely political question, they could be raised in dangerous excitement by religious hatreds. Already the first note of this has been sounded by the people who are trying to get up an agitation on the cow-killing question, and every year there is trouble over the Mahommedan Muharrum processions.”

“But who looks after the popular rights, being thus unrepresented?”

“The Government of Her Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, in which, if the Congress promoters are to be believed, the people have an implicit trust; for the Congress circular, specially prepared for rustic comprehension, says the movement is ‘_for the remission of tax, the advancement of Hindustan, and the strengthening of the British Government._’ This paper is headed in large letters—‘MAY THE PROSPERITY OF THE EMPRESS OF INDIA ENDURE.’”

“Really!” said Pagett, “that shows some cleverness. But there are things better worth imitation in our English methods of—er—political statement than this sort of amiable fraud.”

“Anyhow,” resumed Orde, “you perceive that not a word is said about elections and the elective principle, and the reticence of the Congress promoters here shows they are wise in their generation.”

“But the elective principle must triumph in the end, and the little difficulties you seem to anticipate would give way on the introduction of a well-balanced scheme capable of indefinite extension.”

“But is it possible to devise a scheme which, always assuming that the people took any interest in it, without enormous expense, ruinous dislocation of the administration and danger to the public peace, can satisfy the aspirations of Mr. Hume and his following, and yet safeguard the interests of the Mahommedans, the landed and wealthy classes, the conservative Hindus, the Eurasians, Parsees, Sikhs, Rajputs, native Christians, domiciled Europeans and others, who are each important and powerful in their way?”

Pagett’s attention, however, was diverted to the gate, where a group of cultivators stood in apparent hesitation.

“Here are the twelve Apostles, by Jove!—come straight out of Raffaele’s cartoons,” said the M. P., with the fresh appreciation of a new-comer.

Orde, loath to be interrupted, turned impatiently towards the villagers, and their leader, handing his long staff to one of his companions, advanced to the house.

“It is old Jelloo, the Lumberdar or head-man of Pind Sharkot, and a very intelligent man for a villager.”

The Jat farmer had removed his shoes and stood smiling on the edge of the verandah. His strongly marked features glowed with russet bronze, and his bright eyes gleamed under deeply set brows, contracted by life-long exposure to sunshine. His beard and moustache, streaked with gray, swept from bold cliffs of brow and cheek in the large sweeps one sees drawn by Michael Angelo, and strands of long black hair mingled with the irregularly piled wreaths and folds of his turban. The drapery of stout blue cotton cloth thrown over his broad shoulders and girt round his narrow loins, hung from his tall form in broadly sculptured folds and he would have made a superb model for an artist in search of a patriarch.

Orde greeted him cordially, and after a polite pause the countryman started off with a long story told with impressive earnestness. Orde listened and smiled, interrupting the speaker at times to argue and reason with him in a tone which Pagett could hear was kindly, and, finally checking the flux of words, was about to dismiss him when Pagett suggested that he should be asked about the National Congress.

But Jelloo had never heard of it. He was a poor man, and such things, by the favour of his Honour, did not concern him.

“What’s the matter with your big friend that he was so terribly in earnest?” asked Pagett, when he had left.

“Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next village, who have had smallpox and cattle plague pretty badly, and by the help of a wizard, a currier, and several pigs have passed it on to his own village. ’Wants to know if they can’t be run in for this awful crime. It seems they made a dreadful charivari at the village boundary, threw a quantity of spell-bearing objects over the border, a buffalo’s skull and other things; then branded a _chamar_—what you would call a currier—on his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into Jelloo’s village. Jelloo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, cattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him punished for bewitching them and inflicting smallpox.”

“And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?”

“Lunatic! the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would like a native superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than small-pox and criminal tribes put together.”

“Criminal tribes—er—I don’t quite understand,” said Pagett.

“We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack ante-British days became robbers, in various kind, and preyed on the people. They are being restrained and reclaimed little by little, and in time will become useful citizens, but they still cherish hereditary traditions of crime, and are a difficult lot to deal with. By the way, what about the political rights of these folk under your schemes? The country people call them vermin, but I suppose they would be electors with the rest.”

“Nonsense—special provision would be made for them in a well-considered electoral scheme, and they would doubtless be treated with fitting severity,” said Pagett with a magisterial air.

“Severity, yes—but whether it would be fitting is doubtful. Even those poor devils have rights, and, after all, they only practise what they have been taught.”

“But criminals, Orde!”

“Yes, criminals with codes and rituals of crime, gods and godlings of crime, and a hundred songs and sayings in praise of it. Puzzling, isn’t it?”

“It’s simply dreadful. They ought to be put down at once. Are there many of them?”

“Not more than about sixty thousand in this province, for many of the tribes broadly described as criminal are really vagabond and criminal only on occasion, while others are being settled and reclaimed. They are of great antiquity, a legacy from the past, the golden, glorious Aryan past of Max Müller, Birdwood and the rest of your spindrift philosophers.”