Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 14 Mai 1924.
I listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Resolution, and I wish to join my hon. Friend who seconded it in saying how indebted all Members who are interested in questions regarding India are to him, not only for taking this opportunity of raising this matter in debate, but also for the moderate and helpful manner in which he put his case before us. I rather wished, however, that the hon. Member who seconded the Motion, if he will forgive me for saying so, had associated his remarks a little more with the actual Motion upon the Paper, because I wanted very much to find out what was in the minds of hon. Members opposite in reference to this Motion when they suggest that a remedy for these troubles of which they speak so feelingly and earnestly—with many of their statements I agree—could come about by the mere extension of the franchise in India. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion in advance asks us to be very careful, and not to say that he had not been in India. I may assure him that I have no intention of making that statement, but, if he will forgive me saying so, it is not, therefore, wrong to suggest that perhaps to those who have been in India, and have been there for a considerable number of years, the problem is not so simple as it appears to the hon. Gentleman.
Perhaps the House will allow me to give one or two facts regarding India, which probably all Members know, but which some perhaps may have forgotten. India comprises three-fourths of the British Empire. It has an area as large as the whole of Europe, excluding Russia, and a population as thickly spread as Europe. It is not one nation. It is a multitude of nations. It is not one people. It is a vast variety of peoples. When Members recollect that there are no fewer than 220 definite distinct languages in India, and that of the minor languages 23 are spoken by no fewer than a million people each, and when they further recollect that in parts of India the Indians themselves are unable to communicate with each other, except those few who can communicate in English, it will be realised that you must not deal with the conditions in India as the basis of any comparison with conditions such as exist in Great Britain. Not only have you a vast variety of languages and religions, but the peoples of India are divided among themselves to a far greater extent even than the peoples of Europe. There is no more of racial kinship between, let us say the Sikh or the Gurkha and the Madrasi or the Bengali, than there is between the Scandinavian and the South Italian, or just as little as there is between hon. Members opposite who, like myself, come from North of the Tweed and, let us say, the Spaniard or the Portugese. There is an absolute difference in every possible way.
Then there is the great question of caste. You cannot ignore it. You have over 2,000 castes. Caste has grown up through hundreds and hundreds of years, and if any of us has the idea that caste can be removed by a stroke of the pen or by an Act of Parliament, let him put that idea aside at once. Caste has grown up probably through thousands of years, and it will certainly take hundreds of years to pass away. I hear an hon. Member say that it is passing, and no one will contradict him. But it must take a very long time. I would draw attention to a recent report of the conditions in the native State of Travancore, where attempts have been made—this is not in British India—to open the roads near the temples for the use of the depressed classes. That scheme, supported presumably by the State itself, has had to be abandoned and the State troops called out to keep order. You will see that it is a problem which the educated part of India has to face long before we have to face it. If you can visualise an England in which neither the brewer, nor the agricultural labourer, nor the charwoman, nor the fisherman, nor many others, can send a child to school, or use certain public roads that are respectable, or enter a church, you will get some idea of the bar in India. It is essential that we remember those conditions when we deal with the vast question of labour in the factories and on the land of India.
We constantly see in the Press, and occasionally here in this House, the expression "The voice of India," There is no voice of India. The only voice of India, apart from that expressed by the Government of India, is the voice of a few educated men, partially educated or very highly educated in some cases. I do not suggest for a moment that that voice should not be listened to; far from it. In every case the educated must lead the uneducated. But it is foolish to talk about the voice of all India. It is not very clear from the speeches in support of this Motion, except in the case of the Mover, who dealt with mines, whether hon. Members opposite wish to confine their suggestions particularly to mines and factories, or whether they are dealing with labour conditions as a whole. The first point to consider is this: The population of India has grown since 1872 from 206,000,000 to 319,000,000, which does not look as if British rule was such a bad thing after all. If that population is to be considered as a whole, it is well to remember that 72 per cent. of it is on the land. India is pre-eminently an agricultural country, and the first factor in the prosperity of India is the prosperity of the land.