THE NINETEENTH CENTURY No. CCL-DECEMBER 1897 THE PROBLEM BEYOND THE INDIAN FRONTIER It is but rarely, and at long intervals of time, that questions of the first importance in connection with the British Empire in India are forced upon public attention in this country. The Indian administrative machine works for great periods smoothly enough; and though minor questions come up meanwhile for discussion, and for the moment attract considerable attention, they are little more than surface breezes, due to local and comparatively insignificant centres of disturbance. But now and again some vital and fundamental question of administration has been suddenly taken out of the hands of the authorities in India, and submitted to the judgment of the nation in this country. Whenever this has happened, it has been because doubts had arisen as to whether the just claims of India were not being subordinated to the interests or to the special schemes of a section of our countrymen. It is only on the few occasions, in other words, when justice to India has seemed to require no less considerable an effort, that the national sense of what is due from Great Britain to its great dependency has been appealed to and thoroughly aroused. On each occasion when this has occurred the result thus arrived at has constituted a fresh point of departure, destined to determine throughout ensuing years the relations connecting India with this country in all that concerned the points at issue. This was first the case in 1788, when Warren Hastings was put upon his defence. The personal attack on that great servant of the India VOL. XLII-No. 250 3 м Company was but an incident, and a minor incident, in the situation of which it formed momentarily the most conspicuous feature. The true and effective outcome of the trial, and of the movement in men's minds to which it gave rise, was a resolve that henceforth India should not be merely exploited in the interests and for the benefit of the proprietors of the East India Company, but should be governed with a view to the good of its inhabitants, and with necessary regard to their just rights and expectations. To put that resolve into effect Lord Cornwallis was sent to India; and administration in India, in the sense in which we now understand it, dates from the commencement of his term of office. Similarly, after the events of 1857, Great Britain was again called upon to decide to what ends, by what traditions, and under what immediate influences India should in future be governed and administered. The rule of the East India Company may very possibly have been foredoomed to early destruction in the minds of statesmen in this country before it was summarily despatched in India by sepoy bayonets. But no sooner had it fallen before their assault than the national verdict was again pronounced, final, unhesitating, and decisive, that India should no longer be left in the hands of a Chartered Company, governing in the interests and actuated by considerations inseparable from those of a monopoly. These were both crises arising out of questions connected with the development of the internal organisation of India, the expansion of its natural resources, the growth of its material progress, and the protection of its civil claims. But in 1838, and again in 1878, the peaceful progress and development of British India were threatened from another, and on either occasion from an external, quarter. Measures which had been adopted in those years by the administration in India, as indispensable for its security from foreign attack, were, after long debate in this country, condemned by public opinion as calculated, without adequate necessity, to strain Indian resources and capabilities to the limits, if not beyond the limits, of their powers of endurance. The verdict has never been formally set aside. The decision has never been formally revoked that the Government of India would not be permitted to embark in military and political operations, committing it to the limitless expenditure of Indian lives and Indian revenues far beyond the geographical frontiers of India. But, owing largely to the expansion of Russia in Central Asia within the last decade, and to the rapid approach of that Power since 1880 to the boundaries of Afghanistan, a series of measures has been adopted in recent years by the authorities in India which are not only not in harmony with the policy affirmed in this country in 1842, and confirmed in 1880, but are directly and confessedly opposed to it. The measures referred to have been pursued in comparative quiet, and without attracting the general public attention. But during the present year this development, which was based upon and has followed the general lines of the scheme of action laid down in 1878, has met with obstacles of so formidable a character, and requiring for their removal such vast and costly military operations, that the public has suddenly awoke to perceive that nothing less has been aimed at by the promoters of the policy recently pursued than a complete reversal of the decision of 1880. Necessarily this has led to the demand for a searching and thorough reconsideration of the grounds upon which the policy of 1878, which had been formally disavowed when it was last before the nation, has been revived, and thus partially put into execution. The decision to be arrived at will presumably be of the greatest importance both here and in India. For if it should still, on further examination, appear that the consolidation of British influence and the enlargement of British obligations beyond the present frontier are likely to bring with them such an increase of responsibility and of expenditure as to place them practically beyond the power of the Indian administration and its revenues to cope with, either the measures adjudged necessary must be arrested, or some means must be found by which India shall be relieved of the exclusive strain, and the burden, in part, transferred to the shoulders of the people of this country. It is not desired in this paper to express any opinion, or to enter into any discussion as to the relative merits or disadvantages of the line of action which has lately been resumed beyond the Indian North-Western frontier. What is designed is succinctly to trace the past course and the present position of the movement, so as to make clear its origin and character. The direction and proportions which, if continued, it may be expected to take may then be better estimated; and some approximate conception may possibly be formed of its probable effect upon the revenues of India in the event of its further development, and of the light in which the populations of India may be expected to regard it. At the present moment the most useful contribution towards the settlement of the question which can be made by any one conversant with India and the administration of India is to assist in clearing the ground. Light can scarcely fail to be thrown upon the probabilities of the future by the scrutiny of past experience, and by bringing matter clearly under the public view which, however familiar it may be to men long conversant with Indian problems, may not be within the knowledge of many in this country whose opportunities of informing themselves on such subjects have been less favourable. It is quite possible that when all has been done that can be done in this direction the conviction may be confirmed, and the decision unshaken that, in view of changes which have occurred in the conditions and circumstances of the case since 1880, the conclusions arrived at in that year should, as far as is at present possible, be reversed. Be this as it may, what at present is needed is the fullest possible information on the several aspects of this momentous problem by those who are qualified to give it. I propose in this article to trace from Blue Books and from other public sources of information the growth and expansion of the present policy since 1876; to examine in what degree it has, since its first adoption, increased the direct or indirect obligations and responsibilities of India beyond the North-West frontier; to endeavour to form some reasonable conception, from past experience and the conditions of the case, of the further increase of similar responsibilities and obligations which awaits the Government of India, in proportion as it advances in the course to which it has recently recommitted itself; and finally to glance at the question from the point of view of the financial position and prospects of India, and so far as is possible to estimate how it is likely to be regarded by the population of India. Thus The foreign policy to which effect was first formally given by Lord Lytton has been variously ascribed in its origins to the late General Jacob, to Sir Henry Rawlinson, and to Sir Bartle Frere. Whatever may have been the share of each of these eminent men in moulding and fashioning it, it was Lord Lytton who first gave it expression, and who transferred it from the theatre of discussion to the arena of politics. There may have been many points of difference, no doubt, between the several authorities above named; and it is certain that the later measures adopted by Lord Lytton's Government seemed more than questionable to some of the most prominent of those who in past days had sympathised with his general views. Sir Bartle Frere's biographer has told us that 'on essential points his ' (Lord Lytton's) 'action was distinctly at variance with Frere's views, with which he had expressed cordial concurrence; and a course taken which they had both deprecated.' In a note in the same page is a letter from the Rev. T. P. Hughes to Sir Bartle Frere, dated in September 1881, in which the writer says that 'Lord Lytton's attempt to carry out your and Sir H. Rawlinson's programme was not such as to command success.' Yet in 18762 Lord Lytton had written to Sir Bartle Frere, 'We seem to have worked the problem by different formulas, and yet with the same result.' The views and policy of the various statesmen who had given their consideration to the matter were doubtless modified and moulded from time to time by the course and progress of events. This may have been more particularly the case with Lord Lytton, for it was he alone who was called upon to put into execution their common policy, or was compelled, as incident followed on incident, and situation on situation, to determine in what manner it was most desirable to act in the presence of successive phases of events. Lord Lytton may have found, like others find who are com2 Ibid., p. 154. 1 Sir Bartle Frere's Life, vol. ii. p. 156. mitted to a policy of enterprise and venture beyond their own political frontiers, that, as his schemes developed themselves, situations were created for him which he had not foreseen, and that increasing difficulties threatened to arrest the progress of his steps. and to leave him no alternative but the adoption of measures from which he would himself at an earlier stage have been among the first to recoil. But, however this may be, it is at least certain that the military occupation of Quetta and of the Beluchistan territories adjoining Quetta, the establishment of railway communication between Quetta and the Indus, and the posting of British officers as Agents at Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar, were the irreducible minimum of the necessities of the situation, as viewed from the standpoint of all authorities alike to whom the present policy has been in its origins attributed. The programme of Lord Lytton was carried into effect in part only. In part it was found to be impracticable, or in any case to have been premature; and in part its execution was postponed to a later time. It is this third section of Lord Lytton's programme which, during the present decade, has engaged the active attention of the Government of India, and has in the course of execution led to important events which have once again concentrated on the Indian frontier problem the united attention of all parties in this country. To make the present position easily intelligible it is necessary to refer to the exhaustive Minute by Lord Lytton, dated the 4th of September, 1878, which is to be found at p. 4 of the Afghanistan Blue Book, No. 2 of 1881. Before Lord Lytton had been drawn into conflict with the then Amir of Kabul, while the horizon was yet on the whole clear and unclouded before him, he placed his views upon record in the very instructive and interesting State paper I refer to. In this Minute the Viceroy sketched out a complete system and scheme of organised frontier policy from the Arabian Sea at the one end to the confines of China at the other, and from the Indus river on the east to the Central Asian steppes on the west. To enable the reader the more readily to follow this paper in the ensuing pages a sketch map is given; for it may be useful to bring before the eye some outline delineation of the several countries, and some view of the relative positions of the places and the peoples mentioned in the text. It is not necessary for the purposes of this article to dwell on what Lord Lytton himself evidently regarded as the foundation and mainstay of his whole system-the measures, that is to say, to be adopted within the limits of the kingdom of Kabul itself. These measures, which comprised what I may term the central part of his projected policy, shortly proved, for reasons which do not concern us at present, premature and therefore, at that time, impracticable. But it is essential to recall the steps which |