Indian Unrest | Page 2

in stirring up
the spirit of revolt against the British Government. He has pointed to
instances where the best intentions of the administrators have led them
wrong; his whole narrative illustrates the perils that beset a
Government necessarily pledged to moral and material reform, which
finds its own principles perverted against its efforts, and its foremost
opponents among the class that has been the first to profit by the
benefits which that Government has conferred upon them.
The nineteenth century had been pre-eminently an era of the
development of rapid and easy communication between distant parts of
the world, particularly between Europe and Asia. So long as these two
continents remained far apart the condition of Asia was unchanged and
stationary; if there was any change it had been latterly retrogressive, for
in India at any rate the eighteenth century was a period of abnormal and
extensive political confusion. In Europe, on the other hand, national
wealth, scientific discoveries, the arts of war and peace, had made
extraordinary progress. Population had increased and multiplied; and
partly by territorial conquests, partly by pacific penetration, the
Western nations overflowed politically into Asia during the nineteenth
century. They brought with them larger knowledge, novel ideas and
manners, which have opened the Asiatic mind to new influences and

aspirations, to the sense of needs and grievances not previously felt or
even imagined. The effect, as can now be clearly perceived, has been to
produce an abrupt transition from old to new ways, from the antique
order of society towards fresh models; and to this may be ascribed the
general unsettlement, the uneasy stir, that pervade Asia at the present
moment. Its equilibrium has been disturbed by the high speed at which
Europe has been pushing eastward; and the principal points of contact
and penetration are in India.
Moreover, towards the latter end of the nineteenth century and in the
first years of the present century came events which materially altered
the attitude of Asiatic nations towards European predominance. The
defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians in 1896 may indeed be noted
as the first decisive victory gained by troops that may be reckoned
Oriental over a European army in the open field, for at least three
centuries. The Japanese war, in which Russia lost battles not only by
land, but also at sea, was even a more significant and striking warning
that the era of facile victories in Asia had ended; since never before in
all history had an Asiatic navy won a great sea-fight against European
fleets. That the unquiet spirit, which from these general causes has been
spreading over the Eastern Continent, should be particularly manifest in
countries under European Governments is not unnatural; it inevitably
roused the latent dislike of foreign rule, with which a whole people is
never entirely content. Precisely similar symptoms are to be observed
in the Asiatic possessions of France, and in Egypt; nor is Algeria yet
altogether reconciled to the _régime_ of its conquerors.
That in India the British Government has found the centres of active
disaffection located in the Maratha country and in Lower Bengal, is a
phenomenon which can be to a large extent accounted for by reference
to Anglo-Indian history. The fact that Poona is one focus of sedition
has been attributed in this volume to the survival among the Maratha
Brahmins of the recollection that "far into the eighteenth century Poona
was the capital of a theocratic State in which behind the Throne of the
Peshwas both spiritual and secular authority were concentrated in the
hands of the Brahmins." The Peshwas, as their title implies, had been
hereditary Ministers who governed in the name of the reigning dynasty

founded by the famous Maratha leader Sivajee, whose successors they
set aside. But before the end of the eighteenth century the secular
authority of the Peshwas had become almost nominal, and the real
power in the State had passed into the grasp of a confederation of chiefs
of predatory armies, whose violence drove the last Peshwa, more than a
century ago, to seek refuge in a British camp. The political sovereignty
of the Brahmins had disappeared from the time when he placed himself
under British protection; and the Maratha chiefs (who were not
Brahmins) only acknowledged our supremacy after some fiercely
contested battles; with the result that they were confined to and
confirmed in the possession of the territories now governed by their
descendants. But it is quite true that to the memory of a time when for
once, and once only, in Indian history, their caste established a great
secular dominion, may be ascribed the tendency to disloyalty among
the Maratha Brahmins.
The case of Bengal is very different. Poona and Calcutta are separated
geographically almost by the whole breadth of India between two