Here, again, if laws are to succeed they must be in accordance with the
desires of the people. Only the people at large can stop smuggling.
Read the history of how English smuggling was stopped; it was because
no one could smuggle without being informed on--that is to say, public
opinion had turned against them.
But that is not so in Burma. Were prohibition of opium or spirits by
localities where all were treated alike, you could ask the people to
help you to enforce their wish. But for opium and liquor to be sold to
some and refused to others is not a local option. No one likes it, and
no one will help to stop smuggling. That is human nature.
Government has been and is greatly abused for its opium and liquor
policy, but I think if facts are looked at squarely it will be seen
that the situation is very difficult. The only way out that I can see
is through local self-government. If the scheme that I sketch out at
the end of this book took form there would be local option eventually,
and people will submit to what they themselves enact, whereas they
chafe against the same thing when imposed from above. That is human
nature, and it is a very valuable trait of human nature. It is the
revolt against subjection, and the declaration that the objective of
life is to be free. The only morality of any value comes from within;
that imposed from without may improve the body, but it enervates the
soul. Now the body is temporary and the soul eternal.
Here I may end my criticism of the machinery of government. Not that
any of the other branches of the administration are better than those I
have written of. The land laws are, I think, worse, because they are
based on imported fixed ideas and not on any careful investigation of
facts and the underlying causes of facts. The police administration is
bad; the village administration worse than bad. But I do not want to
criticise; I want to establish my point, which is that the unrest in
India is a legitimate unrest, that it is not factitious or political,
but based on very real grievances that must grow till they are relieved.
I have picked out these four branches of the administration: the
Criminal and Civil Courts, the Villages, and the Opium and Excise, for
specific reasons. The reason I chose the first two is because no one
ever seems to have suspected before how bad they were. Everyone has
gone on the fixed idea that because the magistrates and judges are
honest and the law up to date there can be nothing to complain of in
them. The fault must be in the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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