India's Future in the Empire

Mr. President, and Fellow Empire-Builders,--I have a special pride in coming before a Club of this kind that is specially interested in the Empire, because I am convinced from what I have seen during the last fifteen years that the peace, prosperity and continued progress of the whole world for the next century are very intimately bound up with the happiness, peace and progress of the British Empire. (Applause)

I do not know whether we in Canada realize that fact as much as those who are out upon the frontiers of Empire, but the conditions that prevailed under the Union Jack during and since the War are such as to make us feel, when we listen to some sermons and addresses about democracy and its place

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Mr. McLaurin was born at Samulcotta, India, and is the son of two of Canada's most distinguished foreign missionaries. He is a graduate in Arts and in Theology of McMaster University and while there brought distinction to his College by his oratorical skill in debate. He is now a professor in the college at Ramapatam, India, and friends who know him well speak in high terms of his exceptional ability as a platform orator.

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in the Christian religion and the world, that those speakers do not seem to be able to distinguish between a democracy and a Republic. Republics are all right, and they have their place, but we believe that we must help to realize in the British Empire a solution of the great problems upon which the peace of the world rests, and which cannot be solved anywhere else. (Applause)

One of these problems is the relationship of the East and West. I do not think I ever realized the place that the British Empire holds in this regard as I did on the day when the news came to us in India that war had been declared against Germany. At that time I was visiting some English fellow-missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in a small town. We had had the news sent out that war was threatening, and I remember how we waited till noon the next day for the paper from Madras, and the one question in everybody's mind throughout India was just this--Is the navy ready? Is the British navy ready? We knew that if it was not instantly ready, all the Eastern world would immediately fall into chaos. We knew that if it was ready to stand the test, we could carry on the great work of bringing the peoples together in a brotherhood on the background of the British Empire.

Perhaps you can imagine our feelings when we learned that war had been declared as from midnight on August 4th, and that before six o'clock in the morning the British fleet began to stand out to sea, first the smaller craft, and then the great battle divisions as the day went on; and we sat back there and in our mind's eye could see them steaming out of Devenport and Portsmouth, the white water breaking above their bows, and the great smoke clouds rolling off to the lee, and we could see these battle squadrons coming out and taking their places, from right away up in the North down to Harwich and around by the North and South Foreland and Beachy Head, and right up to the Lizard, and so through all the waters of the earth, to take up that position of dominance which under the hand of God they were never forced to give up, and have not been forced to give up yet. (Applause)

That was a small incident, perhaps, but it will just show you how the British Empire has been impressed upon our minds. And as we were coming home on the last furlough it was with a thrill of real pleasure and pride that we saw that Britain was again strengthening her grip on the arteries of trade, and you could see the "old red duster" as it is called, flying up and down from Singapore to Colombo and the Suez Canal, and over all the waters of the earth.

The British Empire has a tremendous part to play, and I wish to bring before your minds two or three factors that make for the solution of that pressing problem of bringing together the East and the West on the background of this British Empire.

The first of these factors is the supply of Canadian news to India, which today is most accurate, most rapid, and is very keenly watched. Not long ago I was travelling in a railway train in India, and sitting next to me in the compartment was a Brahmin lawyer, a man of the highest caste among the Hindus, who have had a tradition of education for centuries--a man trained in Madras University, who spoke better English than you or I do--at least better than I; I do not know what kind of English you speak. (Laughter) He spoke the language of Addison and Macaulay and Shakespeare. He had also been trained in the law school, and was a successful lawyer. Next to him sat one who would be called a solid citizen, owner of about 5,000 acres of land, and head of his district council, the district having about 1,500,000 people. Next to him sat a young student who had just graduated from Madras University and the engineering college, and was in charge of the Public Works Department for that district. We were travelling through the Guntur district, which was one of those chosen by Ghandi, and the officers of his Society, to test out the Non-Payment of Taxes. Ghandi's Society told the people: "The British Empire cannot carry on without money, and if we do not pay the taxes, they will have no money, and they will have to pack up and go home, and then we will have the whole show." Agitators went among the farmers and said, "Look here, you have to pay in three installments your land and water rates, in December, January and February. You just stop cannily at home; let those times pass by; nobody will touch you; we will see to that. You make a success of it here, and all through India we will put on this boycott, and then we will have an end of British administration in India." We were discussing what would happen to the rich country, for the rice country land is now worth $400 an acre, if not more. The first installment came due, and the farmers stayed at home. The second installment came around and they still stayed at home. Then the Madras Legislature, the majority of which is composed of elected representatives of the people since 1919, passed legislation to facilitate the work of attaching the the crops and the farms in case the third installment passed without the taxes being paid. The third installment came; nobody went up, but the police came down, and the crops and land were attached. A date was set, and they were auctioned off, and the poor farmers had to buy in their own farms and property before they could go on and reap their harvest. Well, they got their fingers burned that time, and the Gunter district has not tried that again. The Indian farmer, like the rest of us, can do such a thing once, but he will do it only once. (Laughter) We were discussing these events in the train, and then some turn in the conversation revealed that I was from Canada.

Immediately this lawyer whipped out from his pocket a Hindu paper published in Madras for the Hindu community, and turned over to a passage he had marked, dated at Ottawa three days previously. It had to do with a certain statement of the Premier regarding the attitude of British Columbia to Hindus coming in there. I am not going to discuss the question, but what I want you to notice is that that man in India, in reading the paper, had marked a bit of Canadian news. He knew just where to find it, and he put it up to me and said, "Now, explain this. We welcome you with your hospitals and schools, and all the rest of it, and this is the way you treat us. We are looking forward to being a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. This is the objective we have set before ourselves. Now, you are a Canadian, and here is this bit of Canadian news; how can you explain it?"

They watch everything that is going on in Canada. We are Empire-builders. Do not suppose that anything can happen in a great Canadian city regarding its police force; do not suppose there can be any fuss in carrying on the government of any of our great provinces without them knowing it in India. They know about Ottawa, almost as soon as the news is known in British Columbia. It is spread over the pages of their newspapers, and nothing escapes. We have these facilities through the inter-imperial cable. We know all about the great forests fires in Northern Ontario, and we have, moreover, special articles which tell us that the Canadian home is breaking up; that the people are losing their moral fibre; that they are slowly beginning to loosen the Christian training in this regard; that the life of the young people is spent on the streets; that there is no Western home any more. You see, everything that happens here is not only published in India, but is very keenly watched there; and in other ways also they judge us.

On the steamer coming home I had a very amusing conversation with a young Indian employed by Madden & Co., of Calcutta, the great distributors of moving picture films for India. I asked him what kind of films his company liked best. He thought for a moment, then said: "Well, there is one broad division. The British and American films, we always show with confidence, most of them, but a great many films we get from continental Europe are so suggestive and indecent that the Hindu father will not allow his family to come and see them." (Applause) He went on to say that he liked the American films better; they had more pep and more punch-he had picked up those words from different magazines he had read. But I was glad that Britain was on that side of the line, at any rate.

I want you to get this idea, that the people of India get news of what is going on here so regularly and accurately that they can size up Toronto and Montreal and Ontario and British Columbia day after day, and they are deciding whether it is worth while to be a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. We are really Empire-builders.

The second factor in this work is the supply of news from India to Canada. I wish I could say as many complimentary things about it as I did about the first. I am sure I do not know how the news gets here from India, that is published here from week to week. I have read some of it, and concluded that a good deal of it must be syndicated here from large newspapers in the Eastern States, many of which are not too friendly towards British interests throughout the world. (Hear, hear) We get a good deal of Indian news in English newspapers such as the Times, Manchester Guardian, and papers of all shades of politics there, and by reading and comparing them one with another and getting their Imperial viewpoint-not in the sense of Czarism or Kaiserism, but the real Imperal viewpoint which is one with brotherhood--we can do a good deal to get this point of view. But the common man on the street has no time to read the weekly Times, Manchester Guardian and Spectator and all the rest of them, and compare them one with another. The real crux of the situation is as to how this can be done through Canadian newspapers, at least the weeklies. I know nothing about the Toronto papers, of course--I am going to travel East and West. (Laughter)

I was on a train going from Winnipeg to Calgary and picked up a Winnipeg sheet, and featured in the middle of the front page was a piece of alleged news from India stating that there were a number of young patriots in South India who had conceived the idea that a great source of India's weakness was the system of caste by which the low caste people were not given equal privileges with those of higher grade. Their idea was to get some of these outcastes and lead them by the hand up towards the temple, intending to introduce them to the privileges of the temple. But the police turned up and smashed the whole movement, arrested those young patriots and sent them to jail, and chased the others back. As a matter of fact that incident occurred shortly before we came home. The temple is not far from our field of labour, and we knew just what had happened. The trouble was that the young men, with the best mind in the world, true reformers who wanted to do away with caste, went down and got those outcasts and led them a certain distance, and then the trustees of the temple came out and said, "This is private property, and we have our own rules and laws, and we do not allow those people to pass into the temple." They began to argue and plead with the trustees, but these were adamant. Finally the young fellows said they would force their way in, and they went back and got some more outcasts, and. came up with sticks and stones, and proceeded to break their way into the temple.

The trustees applied to the police, who came out and tried to talk sense to those young zealots, but they would not listen, and still persisted in their efforts, and they had to be taken into custody. It was not that the government was opposed to reform movements to Hinduism, as that article would lead one to suppose, for the government has nothing to do with religion; but it has a duty to protect property. If people have a temple of their own they can preach in it, that the moon is made of green cheese, and they have a perfect right to do that and keep people of an opposing belief out. (Laughter) That is the only sensible view that the government can take.

Not long ago I travelled, the other way, and picked up a Montreal sheet in which I read something similar-an incident which had happened shortly before we came home--about a group of reformers in the Punjab called the Akalies who wanted to reform a certain shrine near Amristar. They left the right road and proceeded to do their work by force; they said, "We will overwhelm them and take possession of the shrine." But the shrines were private property; they had their trustees who called in the police, and the police said: "We cannot allow you to do this sort of thing by force; if you want to go in for the reform of any shrine, do it in a proper way, don't run foul of the common law." But the agitators incited the populace to violence, and they had to be arrested and put in jail; yet I read in this Montreal paper that the government for some unknown reason, were opposed to these reformers going to a certain temple to worship the one true God! the superior police officer in that particular division. A telegram came to him that trouble was expected, and ordering him to see about it. He did not know just what all this meant, but he wandered out to the road where the Mohammedans usually came along. It did not occur to him to take four or five constables with him. He wore khaki shorts and shirt, puttees, a helmet, and a little rattan cane. He strolled over to the road and stood there in a bored fashion, tapping his leg with a cane. Around the spur of the hill everything was going on, and preparations were being made, the drums were beating, Mohammedan holy men were chewing their drug and getting the people together. After a while everything was ready, and they swung around the corner of the hill; the holy men flourishing their knives, the ancient drums beating, and the procession moving on with three or four hundred people. They came around the corner of the hill, and then they stood still, for they saw young White standing there tapping his leg with the cane, and they turned around and went home. That was all there was to it. (Laughter and applause)

Now, that sort of thing happens many times; and what is the reason of it? The reason is simply the reputation, the prestige this Service has built up for absolute fearlessness from the very first. That mob knew that that young chap would not flinch. They knew that if they got past him they would have to kill him, and if they killed him they knew that the consequences would be worse than they cared to contemplate. It is this Service that is now handing over to the Indians themselves the work of building up that country. It is true that self-determination is a perfectly good principle, and the English conscience is determined that the Indians shall have at least a chance to learn how to run their own country; but as we shook hands with those men and bade them good-bye, you can imagine what we thought of this thing of calling them tyrants and bureaucrats and all the rest. I say they have written a page in the history of India which will make every one of us proud to be called an Anglo-Saxon when it is properly understood. (Applause)

It is not only a question of fearlessness; I have spoken also of their justice. The real centre of the British Empire is not the houses of Parliament in London; it is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It is the sense of justice, after all, that is one of the greatest ties in the British Empire today. (Applause.) Those little Indian villages where the people do not know much about Westminster or the method of governing, know that if they can get a matter right back to an Englishman and then back to the Privy Council they will get justice at the last. You may have heard of the small village in one hill section of India where they had a great deal of trouble with their landlord, and they carried it from one court to another, and finally it was taken to the Privy Council at London, and they were delighted with the decision that was handed down, with the justice that they got; and as a consequence this Hill tribe solemnly got together, deposed the Mud God which they had, and set up another which they called the Privy Council. (Great laughter) So I may say that in many ways the Privy council is the real centre of the British Empire.

Another factor in building up the British Empire is the wise understanding and sympathy for what is going forward in India among all classes there; a very important factor, because the Hindu is extremely sensitive. Above all men, I think, he is a person who responds quickly and most generously to sympathy, and if I may say so without being misunderstood, to love, wherever it is shown. He is not very much like the people of Canada in that way. You know the Westerners hate to show emotion, and are very reserved while the Indian is not in the least so. In my Woodstock college days I remember a speaker who tried to awaken our emotions, and I observed that as soon as the boys saw the drift of his efforts they braced themselves up stiffly against the chairs in front of them, and absolutely refused to be affected emotionally. In India, on the contrary, the people are more like children, and at their festivals they leave the police to do practically everything for them in the way of arranging their tents and conveniences. They have absolute confidence in the government. There is an appealing sense of helplessness about the Indian groups, and they have to be prodded out of their old sleep, and the prodding has been going on now for about five years with results that stretch from the grotesque to the sublime. The first thing that India needs is sympathy with the aspirations of the people. It is right that they should have a chance, and that they should be trained in order that if possible they may carry on the government of their own country, but what I wish to emphasize especially is that that sympathy must be understanding and wise.

Democracy for India? Yes, but there is a delusion of democracy-the delusion that any man, no matter who he is or what he is, is equally capable of doing any other man's work right away. You find that almost everywhere. The idea is that men who are managing the big things of earth do so because they knew a few tricks of the trade, a few methods, that is all; the idea that if I only knew a few tricks that the General Manager knew I could conduct the business as successfully as he does; the idea that it is all a question of a few methods. We have the same thing in our universities today; a good many men who have studied psychology in the last four or five years seem to say, "Yes, this is our open sesame; all the world of knowledge is open before us, and it is just a sort of trick, after all, just learning how to handle a few cards, or something similar, and all learning will be ours." It is just the old delusion of the royal road to knowledge. You find it in business, and in a sense in administration also. We find thousands of young Hindus today who have been taught that after all the administration of India is simply nothing but a few tricks of the trade, and they say one of the methods of the British rule in India is to "divide and rule; to conquer them and rule over them in detail," and they are sure that there are just a few more methods like this, just a few more tricks of the trade, and if they can get them there is no reason why they should not mount the saddle, or get behind the wheel and administer India forthwith just as it has been administered, if not better. Well, that is a delusion -the delusion of democracy--and it is causing many people a great deal of trouble throughout the world today.

The fact is that this is only machinery, and a country is never governed, or a business is never managed, by a few tricks of the trade, or learning a few methods; but what is governing India is the character and the spirit behind those methods. (Applause) That is what we must remember in every department of our life today. Too often not only those of us who are conducting various businesses, but people in other places as well, get this idea that the whole thing is simply a question of method, and not a question of the spirit and character behind it. It is because the Indian Civil Service has had character, in which fearlessness, incorruptibility, and absolute regard for truth are elements that I claim they have shown a record and spirit which are not unworthy of the Christian religion and our holy faith; and it is because those men stand for that character and have that spirit that one thousand of them, the core of the Service, are able to guide the destinies of 320,000; 000 Indians at the present time. (Applause)

So, when we speak of empire-builders in the best sense, we must learn that tremendous lesson, too. After all, it is not just in passing news back and forth; it is not simply in informing ourselves; not simply in expressing sympathy; but it is the character of the private and public life of Toronto and Canada--(Hear, hear)--that is to have a decisive effect on that our Empire is and what our Empire is to be.

They are watching us, and what will absolutely tell in India is purity of heart and mind and imagination integrity in civic, municipal, provincial and dominion life; honesty, courage, character, right through. In so far as we within this Empire maintain that attitude of sympathy, and look on this Empire as a brotherhood, and in so far as we are not afraid to show the faith that is in us and be true to the one that we call our Master and our Lord, in so far will we make this British Empire, under the good hand of God, the greatest force that has been seen up to the present time in solving this problem of the East and West, and of leading this old world on as she has never been led before, "On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God." (Loud applause, the audience rising and cheering).

Rev. Dr. Endicott expressed the thanks of the Club for the inspiring address.