Chapter 34

I think I may have said enough to prove, briefly and superficially, the importance, in Central and South-Eastern Europe, of the ideas of Race and Religion, the necessity of understanding their strength and operation. So soon as we cross into Asia we find these ideas universally paramount. It will perhaps be remembered that Henry Maine pointed out long ago, in his book on Ancient Law, that during a large part of what we call modern history no such conception was entertained as that of territorial sovereignty, as indicated by such a title as the King of France. 'Sovereignty,' he said, 'was not associated with dominion over a portion or subdivision of the earth.' Now I do not believe that a territorial title is assumed at this moment by any of the great Asiatic sovereigns in Asia. Here in Europe we talk of the Sultan of Turkey, the Shah of Persia, or the Emperor of China; but these are not the styles or designations which are actually used by these potentates; they are each known, on their coins, and in their public proclamations, by a string of lofty titles, generally religious, like our 'Defender of the Faith,' which make no reference to their territories. Such were the titles of the Moghul emperors of India, and I may here observe that the term Emperor of India, now borne by the English king, is entirely of British manufacture. The truth is that Asiatic kingdoms have no settled territorial boundaries, they are always changing, just as our Indian frontiers are constantly moving forward; and wherever in Asia there exists a demarcated line of frontier, it has been fixed by the intervention of European governments interested in maintaining order. In Mohammedan lands the basis of a ruler's authority, in theory at least, is religious, and all through Western Asia there is the closest connection between the State and the dominant creed of Islam; for a Mohammedan sovereign's authority is ecclesiastical, so to speak, as well as civil; he is bound, in the words of our Litany, not only to 'execute justice,' but to 'maintain truth'; and the theory of two separate jurisdictions, spiritual and temporal, is practically unknown, though of course in dealing with religious questions the ruler must be supported by the chief expounders of the law of Islam. To borrow a phrase from Hobbes, 'the religion of the Mohammedans is a part of their policy,' as it is also the fundamental bond of their whole society.

We have seen that in South-Eastern Europe there is an intricate intermixture of the distinctions of race and religion, with a tendency of race to win the mastery. This is because the people of those countries were conquered by Islam, but only partially converted, and the Turkish Sultans, as I have already said, encouraged discord among their Christian subjects. But in Western Asia the faith of Islam not only conquered but converted much more completely; it almost extirpated other faiths in Asia Minor and Persia, leaving in Asia Minor only a few obscure sects, like the Nestorians, in a region that had been wholly Christian, and leaving in Persia only some scattered relics of the great Zoroastrian religion, still represented in two or three towns by those whom we call Parsees. In these lands, therefore, religion has generally mastered race, for the laws that regulate the whole personal condition and property of the people are determined by their religion, with a certain variety of local customs. Nevertheless, beneath the overspreading religious denomination there are a large number of tribal groups, all of whom are known by tribal names. Most of these tribes are fanatic Islamites, but in the midst of them is one group which is distinct by religion and probably by race--I mean the Armenians. They do not form a majority of the population in Armenia, they are scattered about Western Asia, and are divided into two Christian sects, which under the Turkish empire are regarded as two religious communities. Their recent terrible misfortunes afford a signal and melancholy warning of the danger of interfering in Oriental affairs without a full understanding of the complications arising out of these very differences and antagonisms of race and religion that I have been endeavouring to explain. And the whole story is a striking example of the tremendous power of religion in Asiatic politics. In 1895 the European Powers interposed in the name of justice and humanity to press upon the Turkish Government the reforms that had been promised by treaty, and thus to better the condition of the Armenians, by securing to them a certain share in the local and municipal government. But the Armenians are a scattered and subject people, different in race and religion and language from the ruling Turks, and the demand for giving them some kind of independence alarmed the Turkish Government and inflamed the fanaticism of the Mohammedans. The only result of European intervention was a frightful massacre of the Armenians, which the European Powers witnessed without any serious attempt to stop. Such are the consequences of misunderstanding the real political situation and the forces at work. Probably many people in England had a very hazy notion of what the Armenians were, or what their name signified. We have always to remember that throughout Asia, and indeed over the greater part of the non-Christian world, the various sections of the population very rarely use for themselves, or indeed for the country that they dwell in, the name that is used for them by Europeans. As our own system has become territorial, as we call any natural-born inhabitant of France a Frenchman, and so on, we are led by a false analogy to talk of Turkey and the Turks, Persia and the Persians, India and the Indians, China and the Chinese. But these broad designations denoting modern nationalities are not used in Asia by the people themselves, to whom such a conception is foreign. I know of no terms in the languages of these countries that correspond to our words, Turkey, India, China, as geographical expressions, and I think that the names used by Europeans for outlying countries or peoples often come from some accident or chance, or mistake, or by taking the name of a part of a country for the name of the whole. In Asia the people still class themselves, in their ordinary talk, by names designating religion or race. A curious example of a religious designation still survives, by the way, among Europeans in South Africa. When the first Portuguese explorers of the African coast asked the Arab traders about the indigenous tribes, they, being Mohammedans, said that the natives were all Kafirs, which means Infidels. This was supposed to be the general name of a people, and it has been handed down to us so that we still call the South African natives Kaffirs. I doubt whether the tribes concerned have ever used or recognised among themselves this unsavoury name. I may note, by the way, that one of the most ancient tribal names in Asia is that by which the Greeks, outside the Turkish empire, are often known--Yunâni, or Ionian--which must have been in use from the days when the Greek colonies settled on the coast of Asia Minor, many centuries before the Christian era.

We are pushing our survey eastward across Asia. The kingdom known to Europe by the name of Persia is styled by its inhabitants _Irân_, though I doubt whether a Persian subject belonging to a particular tribe or sect would call himself _Irâni_. The next independent kingdom, beyond Persia, is Afghanistan; and here we have an example of a designation originally implying race, gradually merging into one that is territorial and political. Afghanistan originally meant, I believe, the great central mass of mountains occupied by a tribe called Afghans; it is now becoming a name that includes the whole territory ruled by the Afghan Amir at Kabul. The causes that are producing this change in the signification of the word are, first, that the Amir of Kabul has subdued, more or less, all the tribes inhabiting the country; and secondly, that the pressure of England and Russia on two sides of that country has necessitated an accurate demarcation of frontiers all round it, in order that the Amir's territories, which are under our protection, may be precisely known. The kingdom is thus acquiring a territorial designation. But this kingdom of Afghanistan is really composed of a number of chiefships and provinces very loosely knit together under the sway of the Amir, which might fall asunder again if the rulership at Kabul became weak. And the population is all parcelled out into various races and tribes, usually dwelling in separate tracts under local chiefs; they are always known among themselves by names, denoting race or tribe; sometimes patriarchal, like the Children of Israel, or the clans of our own Highlands; sometimes local, and in one case historical, for the dominant tribe to which the Amir belongs has called itself Durâni or royal.

It is therefore the distinction of race or tribe, not of religion, that governs the whole interior population throughout this vast region of high mountains and valleys in the centre, with comparatively open country on the north and south; the whole area has been peopled by a conflux of tribes. Yet Afghanistan has some of the symptoms of national growth--I mean that if it could hold together as one kingdom it might grow into a nationality. In religion the Afghans are almost all fanatical Mohammedans, for Afghanistan is the great bulwark and citadel on the eastern frontier of Islam, and beyond it, in Eastern Asia, there are no independent Mohammedan principalities. The kingdom has a strictly defined territory, and a dynasty which has risen from the chiefship of a powerful tribe to the heritable possession of that territory. This dynasty, moreover, is identical in race and religion with a large majority of its subjects, which is another peculiar source of strength; for almost all the other first-class kingdoms of Asia are ruled by dynasties of alien race, who sometimes profess a religion different from that of many of their subjects. We are frequently reminded of the important fact that in India the English rulers are aliens in race and religion from the people; but we may also remember that after all this is only a difference of degree, a wider separation between the governors and the governed than elsewhere in Asia. The principal kingdoms of Asia are ruled by foreign families or dynasties that have come in by conquest. The Moghul dynasty that preceded our own government in India was foreign; and it was a Mohammedan rulership over an enormous Hindu population. The Ottoman Turk was a foreign invader from Central Asia, who still governs a variety of races and religions. In Persia the Shah's family is of a Turkish tribe. And the Emperor of China is a Mandchoo Tartar, of a race quite apart from that of the immense majority of the Chinese. Of course the Russians are as much aliens in Central Asia as the English in India; they govern from St. Petersburg as we do from London. I doubt, therefore, whether there is any other kingdom in Asia that has more of the element of national unity than Afghanistan, though unfortunately its political condition is precarious, because there is still much tribal disunion inside it.

Eastward again beyond Afghanistan we enter the Indian empire, a vast dominion stretching south-eastward from the slopes of the outer Afghan hills and the Persian border to the western frontiers of the Chinese empire and of Siam, and controlling the whole seaboard of Southern Asia, from Aden to Singapore. It is the possession of this wide territory that has given to the English a direct and most important interest in the problems of race and religion. For, in the first place, in this empire we have to deal with three out of the four great faiths of the world--Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism--and we have to uphold for ourselves the fourth, Christianity. Secondly, we have also within the borders of our empire a multiplicity of races and tribes; and we have the peculiar Indian institution of Caste, which marks off all Hindu society into innumerable groups, distinguished one from another by the rules that forbid intermarriage and (in most cases) the sharing of food. Now the word Hindu requires a special explanation, because there is nothing exactly like it elsewhere in the world; it is not exclusively a religious denomination; it denotes also a country and a race. When we speak of a Christian, a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, we mean a particular religious community without distinction of race or country. When we talk of Persians or Chinese, we indicate country or parentage without any necessary distinction of creed. But when a man tells me he is a Hindu, I know that he means all three things together--religion, race and country. I can be almost sure that he is an inhabitant of India, quite sure that he is of Indian parentage; and as to religion, the word Hindu undoubtedly locates him within one of the manifold groups who follow the ordinances and worship the gods of Hinduism. Next in importance to the Hindus, as a religious community, come the Mohammedans, who number over sixty millions in India. The two faiths, Hinduism and Islam--polytheism and monotheism--are in strong opposition to each other; yet they are not quite clean cut apart, for some Hindu tribes that have been converted to Islam retain in part their primitive customs of worship and caste. And in Burmah, as in Ceylon, the population is almost wholly Buddhist.

In a very able article that has recently appeared in an Indian magazine, the writer, a Hindu, observes: 'The Hindus offer a curious instance of a people without any feeling of nationality.' He finds an explanation in 'the intensity of religiousness, which led to sectarianism, and allying itself with caste, tended to preserve all local and tribal differences.' Other causes, historical, political, and geographical, might be mentioned, but I agree that the chief separating influence has been religious. And, however this may be, it may be affirmed that within our Indian empire at the present moment the primary superior designation of a man is according to his religion--he is either a Hindu, a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist. But inside these general religious denominations are very many distinctions of caste, race, or tribe. The Sikhs are a sect of Hindus who belong exclusively to the Punjab. The Marathas and Rajpûts are races who profess Hinduism and who always call themselves by their racial names: and there are many aboriginal tribes, like the Bheels and Gonds, who are being gradually absorbed into Hinduism. Race and religion are, in fact, more profoundly intermixed in India than perhaps in any other country of the world; and into such an intricate subject I cannot now enter. My present point is that in India we are governing an empire of the antique pattern, quite different from the western nationalities, a country where complexities of race and creed meet us at every turn in the course of our administration; an empire which, as Mr. Bryce has pointed out in a recent essay that is full of light and knowledge, has many striking resemblances with the dominion of Imperial Rome.[57] There is the same miscellany of tribes and races in diverse stages of civilisation, warlike and half-tamed on the frontiers, softened and reconciled by peace, prosperity, and culture in the older provinces of the empire, wild and barbarous in remote interior tracts. There is just visible in India a similar though much slighter tendency of the language of the ruling race to prevail among the educated classes, because the English language, like the Latin, has greater literary power, and conveys to the Indians the latest ideas and scientific discoveries of the foremost nations of the world. There is also a certain diffusion of European manners and even dress, resembling in some degree what took place even in such a remote province of the Roman empire as Britain, where, as we know from Tacitus, it was made a reproach against the Romanising Britons that they were abandoning their own costume for the Roman toga and adopting the manners of their conquerors. All these tendencies are slightly affecting distinctions of race and religion; though in India these distinctions are far deeper than they were under the Roman empire, and so far as one can judge they are ineffaceable.

In regard to religious differences, so long as the people were almost universally polytheistic the Romans had little trouble on this score, since every deity and every ritual was tolerated indifferently by their government, provided that public order and decency were observed; and this is the practice of our Government in India. But we have one difficulty in governing India that did not trouble the Romans at the time when they first founded their empire by conquest. I think that religion had then very little influence on politics. It was the advent of two great militant and propagating faiths, first Christianity, next Islam, that first made religion a vital element in politics, and afterwards made a common creed the bond of union for great masses of mankind. It has now become in Asia a powerful instrument of political association. Therefore when we proclaim for our government in India the principle of religious neutrality we do indeed avoid collision with other faiths, but we are without the advantage that is possessed by a State which represents and is supported by the religious enthusiasm of a great number of its subjects. I take the separation of the State from religion to be a principle that is quite modern in Europe; and outside our Indian empire it is unknown in Asia. Everywhere else the ruler is the head of some dominant church or creed. On the other hand our neutral attitude enables us to arbitrate and keep the peace between the two formidable rivals, Islam and Hinduism, which in a large measure balance and restrain each other. And it is easier to govern a great empire full of diverse castes and creeds when you only demand from them obedience to the civil law, than when the Government takes one side on religious questions. Nevertheless, though in India we proclaim and practise religious neutrality, we must always remember that India is, of all great countries in the world, that in which religious beliefs and antagonisms affect the administration most profoundly, and subdivide the population with the greatest complexity. For the empire contains a wonderful variety of races and tribes, especially on its frontiers; it has the fierce Afghan tribes under our protectorate on the north-west, a cluster of utterly barbarous tribes in the north-east, and in the Far East beyond Burmah we have undertaken the control of a border tract, full of petty rival chiefships, where the language, manners and origins are related to the neighbouring population of China.

In China we have the true type of Asiatic empire, by far the oldest in the world, a sovereignty that, with various changes of dynasty, has governed the Far East of Asia from time almost immemorial; an immense conglomeration of different races under the rulership of a dynasty that is foreign to the great majority of its subjects. Here again I must remark on the absence of territorial or national designations. The word China, as designating this empire, is not used by the people themselves; the official name means, I believe, the Great Pure Kingdom; and the emperor himself is known by various titles signifying august, lofty, or sacred. I suppose that almost the whole population belongs to the great Mongolian or Tartar family of mankind; but the subdivisions of different tribes, races, and languages must be numerous, as might be expected in such a vastly extended empire, and the tribesmen are all known by their tribal names. In regard to Religion the situation is peculiar, it is without parallel elsewhere in Asia; for three great systems exist in China separately and independently, each of them working in peace side by side with the others: the religion founded by Confucius, which is a great system of morals; Buddhism, which is a Church with a splendid ritual, priesthood, and monastic orders; and Taoism, which is a kind of naturalistic religion, the worship of stars, natural forces, spirits, deified heroes and local gods. It is said to be a common thing for one person to belong to all three religions, and the State superintends them all impartially. One very remarkable and peculiar fact, which I give on excellent authority, is that in China religious denominations are never used to denote sections of the people, except by the Mohammedans, who are not numerous and form a class apart. But any attempt to describe the religion of China would lead me far beyond the scope of this address. My present point is only to lay stress on the enormous political importance, in China as elsewhere in Asia, of the religious idea. For whereas powerful religious movements, affecting the destinies of kingdoms and causing great wars, have ceased in Western and Central Europe, in Asia all governments have constantly to apprehend some fresh outburst of religious enthusiasm, the appearance of some prophet or new spiritual teacher, who gathers a following, like the Mahdi in the Soudan, and attacks the ruling power. The Taeping rebellion, which devastated China some forty years ago, is a case in point; it was begun by a fanatic leader who denounced the established religions, and it soon became a dangerous revolt against the Imperial dynasty. And the outbreak against the foreigners in China last year is understood to have originated in religious fanaticism. These events go to illustrate the enormous influence on politics which Religion, whether you call it enthusiasm or superstition, exercises everywhere in Asia.

But of all empires in Asia, the Russian empire is the greatest and the most powerful. I have only space to say here that it is of the same type with the others; it is a vast dominion over an infinite variety of races, tribes, and creeds; it is a government which has come in by foreign conquest; a Christian Power which has among its subjects a great number of Mohammedans. It differs from our Indian empire in this respect, that the Russian conquests were made gradually by land, across Central Asia, or by slow immigration and extension, as in Siberia, whereas the English reached India by a long sea-journey. So that in the Asiatic empire of Russia the separation of race between the rulers and their subjects is not so sharply defined as between England and India. Nevertheless the problems that confront Russia in Asia are similar in kind to those which face us in India; she has to reconcile to her permanent dominion a miscellany of alien peoples, whom it is almost impossible to fuse and consolidate into anything like a nationality.