India As I knew It

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In the following pages I have attempted to show some- thing of India as I knew it from 1885 to 1925. I left India in 1920, but since then have been in constant communication with many friends there, British and Indian. It is hoped that the earlier chapters which deal with the life and work of an Indian civil servant in the Punjab, the Native States of Rajputana, Hyderabad and Central India, and on the North-West Frontier, may be of some interest to those who desire to know something of the work and responsibilities of a British official in India.

The later chapters deal with wider issues: the administration of a great province during the world war, the revolutionary conspiracies, the Punjab rebellion of 1919 and its sequel, the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the methods by which they were carried through, and the results of their working up to date. The final chapter discusses the issue raised by a notable book last year-is India a Lost Dominion?

I have endeavoured to supplement in many cases the official versions of these matters, where, in my opinion, they are inadequate or inaccurate. In this I have been aided by the fact that for the last thirty years I have kept a fairly full diary, and am also in possession of copies of the various notes and memoranda I addressed to higher authority. Many of the matters I have touched upon are controversial; but in discussing them my sole object has been to place the facts as known to me on record, and to state my own conclusions as based on those facts. The main purpose of the book is to emphasise the responsibility of the people and Parliament of Great Britain "for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples," and to show where that responsibility is being lost sight of or inadequately discharged.

In my time I have done what I could according to my lights to serve the interests of the peoples of India, and particularly of the dumb masses who, in the tumult and the shouting of politics, are least likely to get a hearing. If these pages direct attention to their wants and wishes, which find but little expression in the new Indian legislatures now dominated by a small but very vocal class, my purpose will have been served.

Where I criticise present-day Indian politicians, I do so not from any hostility to them as a class, indeed I have many personal friends amongst them, but because I consider their present policy is inconsistent with the principles laid down by Parliament in the Reforms Act of 1919, and so far from promoting the "welfare and advancement" of the Indian masses, has shown itself to be injurious to both. All of us who desire the progress and prosperity of the Indian Empire would rejoice to see the Indian politicians displaying that sense of responsibility and that spirit of co-operation on which Parliament counted, and which are essential for the attainment of those objects.

**Contents and Sample Pages**