Our Indian Empire

OUR INDIAN EMPIRE AN ADDRESS BY MAJ.-GEN. SIR G. N. CORY, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O. Before the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, May 4, 1926.

SIR GEORGE CORY was introduced by the PRESIDENT and spoke as follows:

I will start by saying that it may seem presumptuous to give a title such as "Our Indian Empire" to this address, except that by its width it allows one to pick and choose the things one would say. I will ask you at the beginning to follow me while I try to clear the air by explaining what India is. Rightly called our Indian Empire, it is a collection of countries, of people very varied in characteristics. There is more difference between the people in the south of India and the people in the north of India than there is between the Portugese and the Swedes. Their language is more different, their climate is more different, and the people themselves are far more different. They have in India a great many languages, a great many religions, a population of over three hundred million people, held together only by the central authority, which in our time, and in my belief, for many, many years to come, is that of the British Crown and the British Empire. Over and above that we have the eastern mentality, quite different from the western mentality. Practically every subject, practically every matter, they look at from a different angle and from a different point of view-such things, for instance, as their ideas of time and punctuality. Let me try and explain that to you. If you or any of us who have the good fortune to be married and have a family wish to take them to the seaside, or away on a railway journey, we make arrangements, buy our tickets, we decide whether the day train or the night train is best for the baby, whether we shall take food for our journey or trust to what we can get, and then go and get the train and off we go. They do exactly the same thing in India with this one exception; they make all these arrangements about the family, and then they go down to the station and then they ask what time the next train goes. If it does not go for 24 hours it makes no difference whatever; they feel neither pleasure nor disappointment over that fact.

As to the size of India, it would roughly fit into a square of two thousand miles to the side. It is bounded on the north by ranges of mountains culminating in the Himalayas, some of the highest peaks in the world. The north of India is flat and dry, very hot in summer and very cold in Winter. The southern part of India, roughly speaking, is a plateau 15,200 feet high, southern and central India. In skipping over it like that I realize that there are many men who know India and various phases of India better than I do, but I wish to put it in the most general possible terms. One thing about India geographically is, that she has a coastline of between five and six thousand miles, kept intact by the invisible authority of the British Navy. Many men in India fail to realize that.

I wish now with your permission to outline my talk about as follows: a few words about the story of India, historically; something about the government of India as it exists today, in its modern tendencies; a few words about the native states, and a few words about the defense of India.

Historically, the first fairly definite records we have of India are of the invasion or migration of Aryan peoples which took place about 1400 or 1500 B.C., and they brought with them the Hindu religion and the Hindu system of caste. I think that is very generally recognized. It may interest you to know that the Archaeological Department of the Government of India is now exploring buried cities in the Indus valley which are contemporaries of the Silurian civilization in Mesopotamia, and the old Egyptian civilization, that is, from 2000 B.C. backwards. The story of India from the time of Christ up to the British occupation of India consists largely of a number of invasions, all, or most of them, over the northwest frontier. Darius of Persia, Alexander the Great, Tamurlane, a host of minor conquerors, strong and virile people, came over the passes and carved out for themselves, sometimes a fairly lasting kingdom, sometimes held authority and ruled over the northern provinces of India for a few years only. Prominent amongst these were the dynasties of the Mogul Emperors. They reached the height of their power, the height of their wealth, and the height of their civilization about the time of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II, that is to say, about the time when the British occupation of India was beginning to move forward. In the year 1661 the island of Bombay came into possession of the British Crown through the marriage of Charles II, who got it as part of the dowry of his wife who was a Portugese princess. My old regiment was raised on that occasion to go out and garrison that island. It may interest you to hear that in our records it is shown that in the first three years our regiment was out there, all the officers except two died of fever, and possibly of drink, because they drank the native spirits and had no idea how to look after themselves. Then we had in those days British trading posts on the west and on the east of India, gradually moving their influence inland as their trade developed, and for purposes of their own advance raising troops. The East India Company by charter were allowed to trade in India and were allowed to raise and maintain their own troops. Moving rapidly forward, I would have you notice the date 1757, which was the Battle of Plassy which finally decided whether France or Great Britain should be the paramount European power in India. Then the story of our occupation in India goes forward, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, whether trade followed the wars or wars followed the trade, one never quite knows. The next really important event is the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, as a result of which the East Indian Company went out of existence, the land and the army were taken over by the Crown, and Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. That, in a very few words, is the story of how we found ourselves in India.

Indian affairs have since the war been brought more into prominence. Those of you who have not been out there have heard from time to time many stories of unrest, disturbances, difficulties. The Prince of Wales on his visit over four years ago now, was followed about by riots. You wondered why. In 1919 a reform scheme was brought in as the result of a report which was drawn up by the Viceroy, Lord Montague, and the Secretary of State for India, Lord Chelmsford. As the result of that, India was granted certain reforms in the constitution, with the idea of giving Indians more and more responsible positions in governing their own country. As often happens in the East, that rather ran away with them, and it was the immediate cause of a great deal of political agitation. To put it quite shortly, the extremists amongst them wanted everything at once. I should like to tell you that the situation in India today is vastly improved over what it was four or five years ago when I first went out. This political agitation was, generally speaking, directed against us, and for a time the two great warring religions in India, Hinduism and Mohammedanism, came together in a political alliance, of which our government in India was the common enemy. That created a very, very difficult situation, but one which has gradually righted itself, through a certain exercise of firmness on the part of the Government of India, and a great deal of moderation and patience. Prominent in that movement, among the Hindus was Mr. Gandhi, a man who acquired a great reputation and enormous influence amongst the inhabitants of India, as they commenced to look upon him in some measure as a prophet and a holy man. One never can quite tell. The man himself, while he was in public life in India, undoubtedly lived a very saintly life. Undoubtedly, wherever he went he was followed by riots, disturbances, seditious speeches, and seditious articles in the newspapers. He was made use of by a number of very unscrupulous men, and in that aspect was a very great and real danger to the country. However, one does not know quite why his influence waned almost as rapidly as it rose. On the Mohammedan side were the Ali brothers. The Ali brothers took as the theme of their discourse the supposed antagonism of the authorities in the British Empire to the Mohammedan religion. Quite wrongly; but events in Turkey at that time lent a certain appearance of reality to this, and for a time they enjoyed great prestige. Mohammedans being on the whole a slightly stronger race of men in India, and more dangerous, the Ali brothers were put in jail by the government of India, and that agitation died away.

This reform scheme which is in existence now was brought in in 1919, and subject to revision in ten years' time, that is, in 1929. It has not been entirely satisfactory to either side; it is impossible to design a scheme of that sort which would be entirely satisfactory to either side. It is a sort of halfway house to home rule. The Government of India is now carried out firstly by the Viceroy and Governor-General-in-Council. His council consists of three Englishmen, three Indians, and the Commander-in-Chief in India is an ex-officio member. When the Viceroy is at the head of that table he is the Governor-General-in-Council, and as such has power to make certain enactments, very considerable powers. There are two houses, which correspond to the House of Commons and the Senate, the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State. The Legislative Assembly consists of elected representatives, with a few nominated members. Each man in the Viceroy's Council is a minister in charge of a department, and the elected members arrive there by a rather complicated process necessary in that country, where it has been found essential to have communal representation as well as area or locality representation. That is to say, suppose we throw ourselves back into the time of Queen Mary and imagine that here in Toronto we have two great warring religions, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, it would then be probably essential to have representatives from each of those communities in whatever house we had, to watch their peculiar interests. Amongst us those feelings do not run so high. In India they have never run higher than they do today. The provincial governments are designed on the same lines as the central government. There is a government of each province in India, that is, the Council, and an Assembly. Certain subjects are reserved for the authority of the Governor-in-Council, and certain are debatable and votable by the Assembly; just as we have here in Canada, certain subjects reserved for the central government, and certain others under the authority of the provincial governments.

Now for a moment we shall turn to the Native States in India. About a third of India and about a fourth of the population is made up of independent native states, lying within the confines of India, ruled by their own princes. We have over a hundred states with different princes, and something like five or six hundred more. These vary in size from the largest, being about the size of Great Britain, to some of the small hill states which are only a few acres in extent. They are dealt with by the central government, and they function directly to the Viceroy. I was talking to the man who is responsible for them and he told me he was having his greatest troubles with a state in the hills because the ruler claimed to be, and was, a god, and whatever he said of course must be right, and it made it most difficult to have any dealings with him at all. Some of these princes are magnificent and incredibly wealthy; others are very, very poor. The wealthier one keeps a state of considerable oriental splendor, even to this day.

I might tell you a story about one of then, to illustrate what Oriental ideas are, and what gets into a man's head when he is an autocrat at the head of a great state. This man-he is dead now-had a birthday or some ceremonial occasion, and had an elephant procession through his capital, hundreds of elephants all dressed in gold and scarlet cloth, and a magnificent procession. The ruler himself, riding slowly along in the midst of them happened to look up and caught a pair of bright eyes in a balcony, which attracted his attention. He stopped the procession, got off his elephant and went in to pay a call. Enjoying himself and the society so much, he stayed there for two weeks, and all that time the procession waited in the street.

Just before I leave the subject of the government of India I would have you note the curious position they are in. They are a government elected in an elected and representative house which cannot be upset, no matter how many times the vote of the house may go against the Government; they cannot be turned out. I would also ask you to believe that some system of that sort is necessary in this transition period, for it will be many years before any considerable number of Indians acquire that sense of political responsibility which is so essential if they are to carry on the institutions in which we all believe.

As far as the budget of India goes, India pays no revenue to England or the British Empire at all. India pays the cost of the army, and the cost of the Indian Civil Service; that is to say, India is self-contained as far as her financial arrangements go. I wish I were more qualified to talk on industrial subjects which might interest many of you, but unfortunately I am not. I can only tell you India is a highly protected country, which they find necessary, and from the point of view of a European living in India the customs duties are very apt to be levied on the articles which we, as against the Indians, require, such as our clothes and things of that sort, because that part of the budget is adaptable and available; it is the line of least resistance. Whatever finance minister is in the House, if he wants a little more money, he takes the things which Europeans use, mostly. Therefore India is no longer a cheap country to live in, I should now like to tell you a few things which we have done for India. In the first place there is the question of the security of her coasts, of which I spoke before. In the early days of the British occupation of India, the occupation of the coastal towns of India, piracy was very rife. The coastal traffic of India was carried on under very, very great difficulties; in fact it is a wonder that sometimes it was not stopped altogether. Today the Coastal traffic of India is very large, of enormous proportions. Turning into the country itself, we have railways, roads, canals, and security. Of these of course the greatest is security. Were we to leave India there is no doubt in the world that chaos would ensue. There have been many hard words said against the railway system of India, but there are many thousand miles of railway, and on the whole they run a very efficient service. The various companies are in process now of being taken over by the government of India. In the almost immediate future the whole of the railways of India will be government railways. The telephones in India are very good indeed. In Delhi and Simla they have had for many years the automatic telephone exchange, and some of the long distance speaking is excellent; they speak astounding distances. The greatest of all is the canals. I was riding the other day to the opening of a new barrage in the Punjab, one of the largest provinces in India, which in former years has been very largely desert, but has now under cultivation something like ten million acres of land. That means that over ten million acres of crops are produced and matured by irrigation, where formerly nothing grew because the rainfall was insufficient. That is almost exactly the area which is cultivated in England, and that is in one province of India, only. Just before I left I was driving by road in a car, and on my journey I got into the canal bank and drove a hundred miles along that bank, then left it because it was not going the direction I wanted to go. That will give you some idea of the extent of these great canals. Thanks to that system and to the improvement in Transportation, I have been informed on very good authority in India, that there is no longer any possibility of famine in India.

Our authority in India has been based almost entirely on tolerance; I think with eastern people that is the securest foundation on which you can build, in the long run, religious tolerance, because to get those people's confidence you must not upset by government authority their cherished institutions and their religions. Missionaries have always and do now work in India, a great field of endeavor-one hears hard things said about them and one' hears wonderful things said in their favor but wherever and whenever they work they do so without the authority of the British government behind them; that is to say, the government, as a government, has never attempted to upset either the religion or the most cherished customs of the races of India. One or two barbaric customs had to be changed, suttee, where the widow burned herself on her husband's funeral pyre, and such customs of that sort had to be stopped, but generally speaking the customs of India today are very much the same as the people themselves made them. In that great country you find people and tribes and races of men living in every state of civilization, from the aboriginees in Central and Southern India who use bows and arrows and live an incredibly simple life, to the modern wealthy Indian who is equally at home in Bombay or Calcutta or any of the European capitals. Every state from the one to the other you will find existing in India today. There are over a hundred languages and there are twenty of these languages which are spoken by over a million people.

Just a few words about the defence of India. The question of defence, with which I myself have of course been most intimately connected, looms very much larger in all matters of public interest than in any country of which I have had any experience. The responsibilities for the defence and the army lie mainly in two directions. The first is what we call out there internal security, that is, to keep law and order in India. That is to say, to be ready to come to the assistance of the civil power when that proves inadequate. The year I went out there, four years ago, apart from trouble on the frontier, which is very considerable, we had a great deal of trouble within India itself. There were many of these arguments which were directed against the government still in full swing, and during that year on ninety or a hundred occasions considerable bodies of troops were called out in aid of the civil power, all over India, from the far south to Rawalpindi in the north. And so we have, and have had for many years past, about a third of the army in India earmarked for these duties. The second and almost equally important duty, is watch and ward on the frontier. Another third of the army in India is earmarked for what we call the covering force. They live entirely in the north and west of India and their duties are to keep the land of India free from raids and from incursions by the tribesmen who live just beyond our borders. Along the north and west of India there is a belt of very rocky, very inhospitable, very poor, very rugged country, mountainous country, inhabitated by a whole host of various tribes of a more or less common origin, and common characteristics and common religion, the Mohammedan. These men from their poor and inhospitable country are very fond of raiding down into the wealthy lands of India, because just adjoining these hills lies one of the most fertile parts of India. They are accustomed to band together to raid down into the villages of India two or three days at a time, round up a village, burn it, kill the men, carry off the cattle and the women, and as much more as they can, and go back to the hills and talk about it. They are dangerous men too, very strong, incredibly active, and men who would quite happily cut your throat or mine for the pleasure which it would give them to feel their knife going through our flesh. They have a system of blood feuds with one another, and the milder people of the plains who dwell over against these hills are always at their mercy, but for our care of them. Beyond that, the frontier of India is suceptible to sudden waves of emotion which are usually worked up under a religious aspect. Then you get the priests amongst them proclaiming what they call a Jehud, that is a religious war, and that has sometimes in the past, and may again, spread across the frontier from end to end with extraordinary rapidity, and then we find ourselves with not one but half a score of small wars and expeditions on all at the same time. Therefore a third of the army is marked for that. And the remainder of the army we have divided out into organized divisions. It gives us only four which are available for a major war such as the case which has been within measurable possibility twice while I have been out, during the four years, that is a war with Afghanistan. The defence of India is so real and so vital a matter, that I have been told that even in a discussion of international disarmament it would be most unlikely that any committee of nations would even suggest that our army in India should be either disbanded or even cut down. The necessity for it is very generally realized.

The modern tendency of political life in India has been towards home rule, towards declaring themselves a dominion, and amongst the most extreme members of the political parties in India towards complete independence. I think that as time goes on the idea of complete independence is dying out very largely. They still have aspirations of becoming a dominion in the sense that Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are. In their wealth, in their population, they are entitled to such. In their cohesion amongst themselves, and in their sense of political responsibility to their country as a whole, they are not yet entitled, there is no doubt about that. The more moderate amongst them realize that. Our government is doing all it can to help them and teach them, but they have got a great deal to learn. They are the most charming of men, the educated ones, the ones one sees and lives amongst, although social life is different because the better educated women keep to themselves and remain in purdah, they are not allowed to meet strangers. That, by the way, is a matter of fashion and not so much of religion. That is the tendency in India and that movement is accelerated at times, and dies away at others. It has made it very difficult for the Englishman in India.

I should like too speak about our heritage in the country. I have spent the winter of each year I have been out there in Delhi; interested in the Mutiny, it has been my pleasure and privilege to take a great many visitors around and show them that little low-lying ridge outside this great walled city of Delhi, where in 1857 our troops held on through the heat of the long, long summer from early June until the 7th of September without shelter, enormously outnumbered, watching this great city packed with mutineers, staving off attacks of almost daily and nightly occurrence. More than that, they had the impudence and cheek to write home to their friends and relatives and speak of their operations as the siege of Delhi. They were besieged themselves but they hung on and they did their best; and I would ask you, and perhaps it comes with particular force at the moment when at a distance we seem to be almost standing in the shadow of a possible calamity, I would ask you to agree with me that our heritage in that country consists of trying to follow in those men's footsteps, that is, that we should hold on and do our best.

The PRESIDENT tendered to the Speaker the hearty thanks of the Club.