Sydney Olivier vs Motilal Nehru

In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi unilaterally surrendered to the British by calling off the Non Cooperation campaign and going meekly to jail. Thus India didn't get what Ireland and Egypt and Afghanistan got around that time. Gandhi's actions confirmed the die-hard Tory view that Indians might take hundreds of years to become sufficiently cohesive, forget about sufficiently sensible, to rule themselves and feed themselves and defend themselves. Thus when the Labour Party formed its first ever Government, an ex-Colonial administrator, Sydney Haldane Olivier, not Wedgwood Benn, became Secretary of State for India.

Sadly he had to deal with Motilal Nehru & C.R Das of the Swaraja Party who were, incredible as it may sound, even stupider than the Mahacrackpot. Boycotting elections is one thing. Not boycotting them so as to prove that elections are useless, is stupid because if you won the elections and spent all your time being useless and making the Legislature useless all you have proved is that you are useless, not that elections or Legislature are useless.

Olivier addressing own slightly less useless House said in 1924

His Majesty's present Government... are in sympathy with the purpose of the Home Rule Party in India.

Tilak had given 2000 pounds of the Gaekwad's money to the Labor Party in 1918. Thus, they backed Indian independence. Indeed, in more moderate terms, their manifesto in 1930 repeated this pledge. Thanks to Gandhi & Nehru, this was dropped from their 1935 manifesto. 

They are, in sympathy with the purposes of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms; that is to say, progress towards Home Rule.

Did Motilal take advantage of this sympathy? Of course not. He was the founder of the most useless dynasty to ever rule India. But that was only the case so long as elections and legislature were useless. 

How can one make them useful? Olivier supplies the answer from the point of view of the working class. Legislators must start doing useful stuff working with what is available. This gives all stakeholders an incentive to upgrade the levers of power available to the Legislature. If this does not happen, there will be no 'common interests' for any class of people. There will just be a polarization so as to get the fuck away from the worthless bollocks being pushed by different types of useless politicians. You can't blame Muslims for hating Gandhi-Nehru nonsense or non-Muslims for loathing Jinnah-Iqbal craziness. 

The predominant common interest that people in a country have is to have more money and to be safer. Sadly, the predominant common interest of lawyer/politicians is to talk worthless bollocks and turn everyone against everyone else.  

But their (i.e. Olivier's) view is that unless a Parliamentary system is welded together by predominant common interests from its foundation in the electorate upwards no theoretical constitution that may be arrived at by a concordat among leaders of divergent interests, for the mere purpose of establishing an ostensibly democratic form, can prevent it from flying asunder.

Olivier understated the case. Thanks to Gandhi's betrayal of Khilafat, Indians would never again agree on even a 'theoretical constitution'. The Brits would have to act unilaterally.  

This has, so far, been found to be the case in Ireland, largely because the dividing power of difference of religion is stronger than the uniting force of common political interests.

India followed the Irish pattern. The Nation was divided on the basis of Religion. However Ireland suffered Civil War rather than ethnic cleansing. 

This is very much more the case in India, as I need not labour to point out to your Lordships' House. The concordats for common political action which Hindu leaders have recently made with Mahomedan leaders

had already been broken because of Gandhi's unilateral surrender. The Khilafatis had discovered that the Viceroy and Secretary of State- both Jews- had been quietly pushing their cause forward while Gandhi had betrayed them completely.  

have displeased their followers on both sides and have merely exacerbated mutual intolerance and antagonism—exhibited by an increase of cow-killing and the increased playing of bands outside of Moslem mosques—between whole sections of the community for whom these divergent religions are a much stronger moving and guiding force than any common political interest.

Khilafat means the rule of the Caliph who wants Muslims to kill kaffirs or, at the very least, reduce them to a servile condition. Gandhi, it was obvious, had been entirely hypocritical, as opposed to being merely tragically stupid, in his support for this cause. He didn't really want some Caliph to replace the King Emperor.  

Jawaharlal, somewhat disingenuously claimed that UP Muslims were not agitating for the Caliphate. They were against (khilaf) British Rule! No doubt, it was also the case that they considered 'hijrat' to involve becoming hijras. 

When these religious rivalries are aroused we have seen again and again, and quite recently in Malabar, for instance, how uncontrollably and murderously they act.

The Moplahs understood Khilafat to mean the rule of the Caliph. If Gandhi was for it and Gandhi was the leader of the Hindus, how could they object to being forcibly converted?

The interests of the small enfranchised class of Hindus in maintaining their position and distinction over the outcaste masses are infinitely stronger than the common political interests of the two classes.

That wasn't the case. The Dalits had the strongest motivation to get together with other Hindus to kill Muslims. Otherwise, they were first in the line of fire. Those Dalits- like J.N Mandal- who thought the Muslims would give them a better deal had to come running back to India.  

The interests of Moslem leaders, as again we have recently seen, tend to be co-terminous rather with Islam than with either India or the British Commonwealth.

This is what Savarkar was saying. The question was no longer whether the Indians could throw out the Brits but whether they could co-exist with Muslims anywhere where the latter were more powerful. The answer, only in the Indian sub-continent, was no. 

Mr. Gandhi has faced this fact that the predominance of religious over secular interests in his countrymen is fundamental, and builds his policy on it.

The Muslims offered him a deal- support Turkey and we will give up cow slaughter. That was do-able. Furthermore, according to Indian law, because 'consideration' had passed the transaction was genuine, not 'benami'. 

Gandhi should have taken the deal.  India gained by opposing European imperialism in Asia Minor and the MENA. But Gandhi wouldn't take that deal nor would he remain steadfast in the cause. He had led the Muslims down the garden path. Furthermore, he was a crackpot. Khadi was no substitute for Khilafat. It was crazy nonsense designed to help Gandhi's Hindu financiers.  

Was there any way forward for India? Olivier thought so. He knew that democracy had softened Catholic and Protestant animosity in Southern Ireland. Indeed, a lot of Ascendancy Protestants had become Irish ultra-nationalists- indeed, they had taken to learning Gaelic. Perhaps, had there been no First World War and no Easter Rebellion, Westminster could have bought off Ulster and kept a united Ireland as a Dominion. I'm kidding. Nobody believed that crazy shit could ever be solved. However, it was not obvious at that time that Muslim majority areas aint safe for non Muslims unless they are ruled over by a Sheikh or a Sultan or the non-Muslim minority is poor and useful. 

Olivier, in typical Fabian style, thought that 'bottom-up' democracy was the solution. The problem was that Indians did not want to pay for schools and sewage treatment and so forth. On the other hand, everybody wanted a share of the imaginary loot the Brits were taking back with them to their own country. Democracy can be a long march to shared affluence and security. But it can equally be a lemming like sleepwalking over the cliff-face of famine and ethnic cleansing. 

This is a case of solvitur ambulando.

Sadly, Gandhi thought this involved walking to the Sea to make salt. He didn't understand that if it was economical to do so, Princely States- like his own Porbandar- would already have been doing so. The fact is, Nehru's Government reinstituted the Salt tax after Independence. Governments need tax revenue to function. What legislators need to do is figure out how to get the poor to pay tax such that the tax revenue is used to raise productivity and thus the poor tax-payer becomes less poor. There is a positive sum game here. Taxation on the basis of Representation makes those who are represented stronger and wealthier (provided, legislators don't do stupid shit). Representation without taxation is a nuisance. It prevents development which might otherwise have happened or it merely gives rise to a rent seeking, corrupt or criminalized class of intermediaries.  

You must get into the boat. If you want to make a political constitution stable you must become a member of Parliament and have a constituency.

That's what Gandhi wouldn't do. But the Nehru dynasty too didn't want to represent any particular constituency. The wanted to be the elected version of the incessantly bollocks babbling Maha-crackpot.  

You must learn to work with persons who differ from you without at once calling for a holy war from your followers—an experiment, however, which has been largely followed in Ireland, where they resorted to methods which seem likely to be popular in India. There is, of course, that danger, and it is the view of the Labour Party that you must build up not only your political party, but your political constituency. That can only be done by Parliamentary experience ranging over a certain number of years.

The problem here is that Labour in the UK was building on a long tradition of Church and Parish and, more recently, Trade Union outreach and involvement with every aspect of life in most districts of the country. India had nothing similar. There was a predatory Government machinery whose expansion nobody wanted to fund. There were agitators who provided some entertainment but who were regarded as a nuisance whom the Sarkar should kindly lock up from time to time. True, there were some charismatic, or plausible enough, lawyer politicians who sometimes said sensible things. But could they be trusted to do sensible things if power devolved to them? Not really. They lived in a fantasy world.  

Before I pass from this terrible danger of religious fanaticism, to which I referred as being dominant in India, I want to mention one very painful occurrence which has been brought to my notice in the last few days, and upon which I think the House would like to have some information—namely, the late recrudescence of killing and of conflict in the Punjab among the Sikhs.

London liked and respected the Sikhs. They were sensible people who were good farmers, stout soldiers and were of excellent character. London didn't like the Babu or the seditious barrister. They were sly and too clever for their own good.  

I will deal with this matter as briefly as I can, but it is one about which your Lordships will want to know so far as can be ascertained, the facts. The Sikhs are a religious denomination. They are not a racial denomination, though they predominantly belong to a race which is a very ancient stock, one of the most ancient European races, according to Professor Arthur Keith, and one of the finest both in brain conformation and in bone conformation of any of the races that have ever appeared on the earth. I know no Englishman who has come in contact with the Sikhs, and who has not the greatest admiration and affection for them. They are people of a fine, ancient and noble race, and they are one of those ancient and noble races which have, if I may say so, a constitutional apprehension of God, and of the spiritual life. They are profoundly religious.

Some little time ago the Sikhs had a religious revival. They found themselves in this position, that the shrines that had been established for the reading of their holy Scriptures, and for the worship of God, had in later times fallen into the hands of corrupt priests, the Mahants, who had taken possession of the properties and annexed the shrines and were abusing their authority for the purposes of gain and of dissipation. The Sikh religious community clamoured for a reform. They formed themselves into a Puritan reform movement. It is unfortunate that the Sikhs were not placed when their reformation came as we were. If this thing had taken place in this country it would have been solved without difficulty. The reigning Prince would have placed himself at the head of the reform movement, he would have declared himself a defender of the faith, and himself would have confiscated the disputed properties and would have bestowed them upon his principal political supporters. The time has passed when that simple mode of procedure can be adopted, and such a method did not occur to the authorities of the Punjab.

For the simple reason that the thing was far more complicated than Olivier or- to be fair- anybody else could conceive. The Maharaja of Patiala was not lacking in initiative and did ultimately marry a daughter of a supporter of Master Tara Singh. That was the mother of Amarinder Singh. But this is a very tangled tale. Only a fool would try to meddle in such matters. Look what happened to Indira! 

The Puritan Sikhs took the law into their own hands, and following a very august example, they themselves said : "It is written in our Scriptures our house shall be called a house of prayer ; these men have made it a den of thieves" ; and they went into the temple and cleared them out. They broke down the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those who sold doves, and turned out the prostitutes and the other sources of gain that the Mahants were using in these places. That was very simple, puritan, direct action. That kind of action necessarily led to violence. In the first place the Mahants themselves suffered violence, and, in the second place, when one of the Mahants saw what was coming upon them, he organised a band of followers with long staves, kerosene tins, torches and fire arms, and lay in wait for the people that were coming to turn him out. When those people had come into the temple they shot down and massacred a large number of these Sikhs, and they poured kerosene upon them and burnt them—a very horrible thing.

Olivier is presenting a one sided picture but it was the one the INC endorsed. What he is not saying is that Sikh disputes are things no outsider can understand. They have a dynamics of their own as became obvious in the late Seventies and Eighties. Socialism or Democracy or some other canting ideology can't solve problems it has no conception of.  

Representations have been sent home. I have seen a telegram to the Prime Minister, and I have seen a long printed document sent to Members of Parliament, reporting this atrocity and laying it upon the shoulders of the Government as having supported the Mahant, ignoring altogether the fact that the Mahant was immediately criminally prosecuted and transported.

Mahant Narain Das out-Dyered Dyer- that was a convenient story both for the Brits and the INC. The other side to the story tells us something about the British Raj. The Mahant, like others of his ilk, had asked for police protection. The British position was that this could be provided on payment by property owners with good title. However, in this case, they were reluctant to act for understandable reasons. Thus no police protection was provided even for payment. The Mahant was told to make his own arrangements. In addition to some bad characters he brought in a hundred Pathans. Clearly the massacre that followed was meant to terrorize the Akalis. The result was quite the opposite. Clearly the Brits would have to pass a law regarding these sacred places even if this meant going against established property rights. This was precisely the sort of dilemma no Civil Servant or Governor wanted to face. That's why the Brits wanted Indians to have Legislative Councils where they could pass laws on issues of this sort which, hopefully, they understood better than Christian men from a far away island. As things stood, influential landlords- the Majithias or the Bedi jagirdars- might make trouble for the administrators back in London. Some hapless civil servant might be made the scapegoat for 'arbitrary action' involving sacred property rights. The fellow might be branded a Bolshevik and be denied a gong or a post-retirement sinecure.  

That was carefully left out of the record and of the statement sent here to the Prime Minister, apparently by a responsible person. However, the Government took action, and very reasonable action. The Government said : "Let us establish a Sikh Board of Control, which shall be made the repository of all the interests of the Sikh religion and of the property of the Sikhs, so that these temples may be administered in the interest of the Sikh religion." That law was passed, but it remained a dead letter. Why did it remain a dead letter ? Because the Sikh movement had been laid hold of by the political movement at Amritsar, which is the centre, as your Lordships are aware, of revolutionary propaganda and disturbance.

What Olivier is getting at- but not saying- is that those Asiatics are going to slaughter each other and then everybody else will join in and the place will sink into penury. England had a Civil War when 'Puritans' emerged. That Puritan ethos also caused America to break away.  

To cut a long story short, this last tragedy was directly engineered in order to create a fracas between the Government and the Sikhs, so that it could be said the British desired to repeat the tragedy of Amritsar and shoot down the honest, religious Sikhs. Excuse was taken of the fact that the Maharajah of Nabha had been deposed—no, not exactly deposed. The Maharajah of Nabha was a profligate and vicious ruler who entirely ignored the interest of his country for many years.

Indians considered him a hero of the independence struggle. He himself blamed the Maharaja Patiala for his misfortunes. Indeed, he feared 'Bhoopa' would have him murdered. Instead, it appears, one of his wives was poisoned by the mercury and arsenic in the medications used to treat her ulcerated skin, but she blamed her husband who in turn decided to blame his daughter and his wife's father for poisoning the good lady. If Punjabi politics was a tangled tale, so was Punjabi family life- at least for Princes. 

We did not interfere. He then committed outrages upon the subjects of a neighbouring Maharajah, and the latter brought an action against him. The matter was judicially dealt with, the whole record of the Maharajah of Nabha was gone into, and it was intimated to him that he should pay compensation to his neighbour, and should demit his office in favour of his son, his son being placed under a regency. The people of Nabha were perfectly content with this.

I imagine they are even more content without Maharajahs who wasted their tax money. 

They knew that they had got a good riddance, but the central revolutionary committee at Amritsar laid hold of this and—I have seen the newspapers—deliberately represented that this was an act of oppression on the part of the British Government who wished to depose and destroy a patriotic Sikh chief, and that the British Government were intending to desecrate the shrines of the Sikh religion in Nabha. They therefore organised a movement from a hundred miles or so away. They sent instructions to the religions jathas, the simple-minded puritans, that the shrines of their religion were being outraged, and that they must go in pilgrimage and claim their right of praying and reading the Scriptures in these shrines at Jaito. The pilgrims themselves knew not why they came. They said : "These are the orders of the committee. We are to act under the orders of the committee. It is
part of our Sikh law that we must obey the laws of our spiritual superiors." Five hundred pilgrims who were non-resisters went, and about 6,000 peasants and others. They went on a pilgrimage to Jaito in order to read their Scriptures. They were informed that they would not all be allowed in the shrine together, but only fifty at a time, for the purpose of making their devotions. They refused to accept this term to enter fifty at a time.

I suppose this had something to do with Master Tara Singh's rivalry with the Maharaja of Patiala. The passing of the Gurudwara Act and the release of arrested Akalis put an end to the agitation. 

The pilgrims themselves pressed on towards the shrine, and the band of 6,000 opened fire on the police and troops drawn up in front of the approach.

An American correspondent described the Akalis as peaceful. 

The result was this deplorable incident in which again State troops and police have had to fire on a crowd of innocent and religious-minded people stirred up by a small revolutionary committee with whom they had no actual connection whatever. If that kind of thing can be done for political purposes, if the religious instinct of a people can be traded upon for political and revolutionary purposes in that way, is it to be supposed that ambitious politicians under a perfectly liberal constitution are not going to appeal to religious fears and feelings in the pursuit of their policies ? That appears to me to be an incident of what is repeatedly done in India—namely, that religious feelings are traded upon in order to serve political purposes.

It is still done in the Punjab. Consider the Guru Granth Sahib desecration controversy which played a part in the fall of the Akali regime and the success of Congress under Amarinder- heir to the throne of Patiala. 

Strangely nothing similar appears to happen within Hindu or Jain or Christian or even Muslim communities in India. 

Olivier was trying to generalize from a rather special case- that of the Sikhs- to the larger question of India. 

In what I have said I have been forced to omit all reference to large sections of the aspect of present Indian problems which are of immense importance.

Olivier makes no mention of the economic grievances of the Indians. 

One of them at least I must not be suspected of having overlooked. It is inevitable when a Home Rule movement springs up in a country whose administration has been foreign, that hostility and injustice should be shown towards the agents of the hitherto ruling Power. It is advanced uncompromisingly that the British have no right in India. The right of British statesmen, public servants, merchants and industrials to be in India to-day lies in the fact that they have made the India of to-day, and that no Home Rule or national movement could have been possible had it not been for their work.

The same could have been said- with as little effect- to George Washington and his merry band of seditionists. 

The Indian Home Rule Party have adopted, and we have joined with them in adopting, the methods of British administration. Our statesmen and our Indian public servants are loyally co-operating in the purpose of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms I have referred to what I thought, was the regrettable lack of limitation in what Mr. Lloyd George said in his "steel frame speech" with regard to the Indian Service. He appeared to forecast the maintenance and perpetuity of British Service in India. It is, I think, impossible to associate this idea with the ultimate idea of Indian nationalism and responsible government.

By stepping up Indianization- sure.  

But, in the transition stage from the present to the future, the loyalty and devotion to Indian interests of the British element in the public Services is as indispensable to the efficient working of any form of constitution in the public interests as is that Parliamentary co-operation on the part of the unofficial classes which I have appealed to the Sawarj Party to give.

This was the crux of the matter. Motilal and C.R Das could have worked with the British civil servants to improve outcomes. Instead they chose minority appeasement- which the minorities knew would be reversed once the Brits left- and non-cooperation.  

All my life I have been a public servant and administrator rather than a politician. But I have written much and have exercised perhaps some influence as a politician in the direction of a constitutional development which has placed me in your Lordships' House. So far as I have any qualifications for my present office it is because of this double education, and from myself at any rate the achievements and the continuing in dispensability of the Indian public Service will always command admiring testimony. If that Service is to be regarded as in course of supersession none the less it is at least essential to the successful conduct of any transition that its high qualities should be recognised, appreciated and realised to the full by all those who are engaged in the problems of effecting that transition.

The problem was that the ICS had only been good when it delivered 'justice from horseback'. Bureaucratic shillyshallying coupled with Political intrigue and incapacity was a recipe for the return of Famine and bloody ethnic cleansing. 

I have done my best, and [am afraid I have wearied your Lordships in doing so, to put before you the views of His Majesty's Government on the Indian situation, their policy and also the feelings of the Party I represent outside Parliament in regard to the aims of the Indian Swarajists. His Majesty's Government are convinced that the, proper line towards Home Rule in India lies in friendly cooperation.

This was perfectly reasonable. Labour held out a hand in friendship and Motilal and C.R Das sank their teeth into it. Henceforth it would be die-hard Tories who set the terms and pace of reform.  

His Majesty's Government have been impressed by two characteristics in the atmosphere of Indian politics. The first is the intense and, as they are convinced, the grievously mistaken mistrust and the determination of uncompromising intransigence indicated in the election manifesto of the Sawarj Party last autumn, and also the dissatisfaction expressed by more moderate advocates of self-government.

The Indians were afraid that if they helped improve governance in India, the Brits might stay on. Why not turn the place into a shithole instead? That way, nobody would ever want to conquer the place again.  

Secondly, and more recently, an appreciable modification of that hostile and intransigent attitude has been indicated not only in the recent proceedings in the Legislative Assembly but in many communications and expressions of opinion which have reached His Majesty's Government, both through official and unofficial channels, from persons representing weighty and influential opinion who are anxious that by some manner of conference a way forward may be found out of the present difficulties.

Round Table Conferences had been a possibility since 1921. It took the genius of the Mahatma, but later Motilal, to postpone that type of progress.  

His Majesty's Government having themselves the same ultimate aim as the India Sawarj Party, namely, the substitution of responsible Indian Dominion government for the present admittedly transitional political Constitution, are earnestly desirous of availing themselves in whatever may be found the best possible method of this manifest disposition towards effectual consultation. Various modes of making this approach have been unofficially suggested. The Legislative Assembly have proposed a round table conference. The Indian National Conference is proposing to send a deputation over, and representatives of Indian interests in this country have suggested a mission to India. His Majesty's Government, while they are open to consider any practical proposals, are not yet satisfied as to what may be the best means for establishing that closer contact and better understanding that is so manifestly desirable.

I suppose, for a coalition Government, the first step would be a Parliamentary delegation to India and then a Round Table back home. 

Some means of arriving at that closer contact must, they are convinced, be sought, and they hope, after due consultation with the Government of India, to be able with the least avoidable delay to decide upon the means they will desire to adopt.

Sadly, time was not on Olivier's side.  

In the meantime His Majesty's Government is unequivocally friendly towards the Indian Constitutional Reform Party, appeals to that Party for patience and circumspection, and for co-operation in using the Councils for their essential purpose of efficient administration according to the views of members on any particular question, and not as a field for administrative sabotage and political exacerbation.

This is the crux of the matter. Parliamentary Democracy can be a very efficient way of taking the nation forward. But, equally, Parliament can turn into a bear-garden. Indeed, you can have a Cabinet where each Minister is trying to sabotage the other while stirring up civil strife around the country.  That's what happened in 1946. But the primrose path to that perdition was paved by Motilal Nehru. It was his decision to contest elections in bad faith- i.e. with a view to disrupting the functions of representative government. Who does that? The answer is a putative Dictator. The Dynasty has dictatorship in its bones. But it is cowardly and incompetent. It has achieved its victories by stealth. Nevertheless, assassination has tempered autocracy.