Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
Unrest in its most dangerous forms has hitherto been almost entirely
confined to the Deccan, Bengal, and the Punjab. It has spread to some
extent from the Bombay Presidency into the Central Provinces, which,
indeed, include part of the Deccan, and it has overflowed both from
Bengal and from the Punjab into some of the neighbouring districts of
the United Provinces. But thanks very largely to the firm and
experienced hands in which the administration of the Central Provinces
under their Commissioner, Mr. Craddock, and that of the United Provinces
under their Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, have rested during
these troublous years, the situation there has never got seriously out
of hand. Except in Peshawar, where the political propaganda of a
somewhat militant colony of Bengalees has stimulated the latent
antagonism between Hindus and Mahomedans, our difficulties in the new
Frontier Province, as well as along the whole North-West frontier, are
of quite a different order, and though the turbulence of Pathan tribes
and the occasional outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism amongst them are a
cause of constantly recurring anxiety to the Government of India, it is
not amongst those hardy and only half-tamed hillsmen that the cry of
_Swadeshi_ and _Swaraj_ from Bengal or of "Arya for the Aryans" from the
Punjab is likely to elicit any response. Such echoes of far away
sedition as may reach their mountain fastnesses provoke only vague
wonder at the forbearance and leniency of British rulers, and if ever
the British _Raj_ were in jeopardy, Pathan and Baluch would be the first
to sharpen their swords and shoulder their rifles either in response to
our call or in order to descend on their own account, as their forbears
have done before, into the fair plains of Hindustan and carve out
kingdoms for themselves from the chaos that would follow the collapse of
British power. Along the North-East frontier British India marches with
semi-independent States that have little or nothing in common with the
rest of India. Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim are Himalayan highlands
inhabited chiefly by Mongolian Buddhists, who have far more affinity
with Tibetans and Chinese than with their Indian neighbours to the
south. Assam is little more than an administrative dependency of Eastern
Bengal, whilst Burma has been even more accurately described as a mere
appendage of India, attached for purposes of administrative convenience
to our Indian Empire, but otherwise as effectively divided from it by
race, religion, customs, and tradition as by the waters of the Bay of
Bengal and the dense jungles of the Patkai Mountains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account