The purpose of this brief
memoir is to set forth the work and teaching of a man experienced in Indian
affairs, who combined political insight with dauntless courage and untiring
industry. The problem before him was, Can the continuance of British rule be
made conformable to the best interests of the Indian people? And his answer
was full of hope. Being firmly convinced that the interests of the Indian
people and the British people were essentially the same, he believed that
under a government in touch with popular feeling, the administration of
India, within the British Empire, might be conducted with equal benefit to
East and West, developing all that was best in the two great branches of the
Aryan race.
But at the same time he realized with increasing anxiety, that the existing
government, administered by foreign officials on autocratic lines, was
dangerously out of touch with the people. He did not blame the men : the
fault was in the system. There existed no recognized channel of
communication between the rulers and the ruled; no constitutional means of
keeping the official administrators informed regarding the condition, and
feelings, and grievances of the people. There was therefore a great gulf
fixed between the foreign bureaucracy, self-centred on the heights of Simla,
and the millions painfully toiling in the plains below. And about the years
1878 and 1879, economic, in combination with political, troubles were
actively at work throughout India ; the physical suffering of the many,
acted on by the intellectual discontent of the few, was rapidly bringing
popular unrest to the danger point. For the masses of the peasantry,
scourged by poverty, famine, and pestilence, were beginning to give way to
despair ; they could not make their voices heard, and they saw no hope of
relief; while, in the schools and colleges, the leaven of Western education
was working among the intellectuals, teaching lessons of political history,
and showing them how it was only through storm and stress that the British
people had won for themselves the blessings of freedom. Hence the mind of
the younger generation was stirred by vague- dreams of revolutionary, and
even violent, change. ,This critical condition of affairs was clearly
understood by Mr. Hume. He had exceptional knowledge of what was going on
below the surface ; and he knew that there was imminent risk of a popular
-outbreak, destructive of that peaceful progress upon which the welfare of
India depends. The new wine was fermenting in the old bottles, and at any
moment the bottles might burst and the wine be spilled. What was to be done?
Happily the solution of this fateful problem was ready to his hand. It was
to be found in the simple formula of “Trust in the People." The Indian
people, intelligent, law-abiding, the heirs of an ancient civilization, are
worthy of the fullest trust; and his urgent message to the British nation
was this, that the path of safety lies in trusting them, and in associating
them in the management of their own affairs.
The record of such a life must be of value to political thinkers among the
British people, as teaching them how to fulfil a trust, such as never before
has fallen to the lot of any nation. But specially it has seemed to me a
duty to place before the youth of India the example of Mr. Hume's strenuous
and unselfish life, and to bring into fresh remembrance the stirring words
he uttered of encouragement and reproof, both alike prompted by his love of
India, and his anxious care for her future. “Excelsior!” was his motto. His
ideal was indeed a high one—the regeneration, spiritual, moral, social, and
political, of the Indian people. But he taught that such a consummation
could not be attained without the solid work-a-day qualities of courage, and
industry, and self denial.
Allan Octavian
Hume, C.B
Father of the Indian National Congress 1829 - 1912 by Sir William Wedderburn,
Bart. |