CHANNELS OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE

(i) CHANNELS WHOLLY ENGLISH

  IN dealing with the influence of the West, which, as suggested in the preceding chapters, has profoundly affected Indian thought and literature in modern times, it is necessary to point out, at the very outset, that this influence hasflowed into the country and made itself felt entirely underBritish rule and chiefly through English literature. This should be clearly borne in mind, lest the fact of India having also had connection during the last 300 years withother European nations besides the English, viz. the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French, give rise to the thoughtthat they also might have contributed in some measureto the dissemination of Western ideas in India and haveinfluenced its literature. It must be remembered that the contact of the Portugueseor the Dutch or the French with India was hardly of anature calculated to create any deep impression on the life of the people. In the first place, their activity was shortlived and confined to small strips of territory mainly along the coast of Southern India. None of them had any direct relations with the people of the north, particularly withthat section among whom Urdu language and literature grew and flourished. In the second place, the objects which they set before themselves were not likely to dispose even those owning immediate allegiance to them, whetherthrough curiosity or admiration or necessity, to interest themselves in the thought and literature of their rulers. The Portuguese, who were the first to land on the shores of India, made themselves repugnant to the people from the beginning. Their lust of power and dominion and their  religious fanaticism and forcible conversions never allowed them to exercise any salutary influence on those overwhom they held their authority. The Dutch, who werethe next to come from Europe, owing to their misfortunes at home, never made any headway in India and speedily sankinto insignificance. The French, whose advent coincided roughly with that of the English, made, no doubt, anearnest bid for power and influence, but their inordinate ambition led to their undoing. They have left nothingbehind in the form of thought or expression except hazymemories of their fitful intrigues against the rising power of the East India Company. It will thus be seen that neither the French nor the Portuguese, much less the Dutch, had the time or the desire to stand as the exponents of Western learning and culture before the people of India. The Dutch have now permanently vanished from the scene. The Portuguese and the French still linger on, relegated to but tiny specks of land on the coast covering not more than a few square miles each, the former at Goa, Diu and Daman, and the latter at Pondicherry and Chandernagore, from where, whatevertheir usefulness to those who acknowledge their authority, they have scarcely any chance of exercising any cultural influence on the vast millions of the great continent fromwhich they are practically shut out. It may therefore be safely assumed that all that we maydiscern in Urdu or, for the matter of that, in any other Indian literature, as belonging to the West, has come in almost entirely through English agencies, the most important of which has been English literature. Becauseof this enormous share which English has taken in the spread of Western thought in India, we may with every justification speak of Western influence in Urduliterature as the influence of English literature par excellence. 

 (ii) CHANNELS CLASSIFIED AND DESCRIBED

Before we proceed to examine the nature of this influence, it would be necessary to describe the main channels andagencies through which it has exerted itself upon the mindsof the people and found expression in their literature. These may be classified broadly into four kinds, all linked together in their natural growth and formation, and all moving along with a common purpose by correcting or modifying or supplementing the activity of one another. In the first place there is the atmosphere itself created in the country by the establishment of a uniform andcentralised system of enlightened and modern administration under the aegis of the British Crown, an atmospherecharged with all those ideas and conceptions which are usually associated with the West, especially England.Secondly, as a natural result of British administration, there has come into being a governmental system of education essentially Western and scientific in preference to the indigenous and Oriental classical learning, and based uponEnglish both as a language and as a medium of instruction in all subjects. In the carrying on of this system the efforts of Government have been aided and supplementedby voluntary organisations, missionary (Christian) or national, which have conformed to the curricula, standards, and methods of instruction laid down by Governmentor by quasi-governmental institutions such as the Universities of the different provinces. Thirdly, as a distinct and spontaneous expression of the reaction to Westernthought generated by the widespread system of Westerneducation, have arisen various movements, political, social and religious, which in their several ways have served as further channels of the new ideas among the people. Lastly, by way of complement to all these activities, has come the  Press, English and vernacular, which has gradually increased in power and usefulness in forming and educating public opinion on modern lines. 

(iii) THE ATMOSPHERIC INFLUENCE

 To take these one by one, it should first be noticed whatthe advent of English power actually meant to the people of India. With the decline and disintegration of the MogulEmpire following the death of Awrangzayb, there was, as shown in the preceding chapter, absolutely no central authority in the country. During the whole of the eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth, India wasin a state of continuous turmoil, confusion and anarchy. It can easily be imagined what an unsettling effect such a state of affairs must have produced on the minds of the people and what a considerable relief it must have been to them to see some strong well-organised power emerging out of the chaos and consciously assuming the role of the restorer of peace and order in the country. That fact affords the real secret of the success which attended the work of the English East India Company. The masses never stopped to inquire whether this rising power wasalien or indigenous. To them " it was immaterial as to who ruled over them, whether Rama or Havana," as the Indian saying goes, so long as they were left to live in peace. It was, however, different with the higher classes, who with the spread of British dominion were gradually losing their authority and influence among the people. For a time they formed the chief source of discontent anddisaffection which culminated in the outbreak of the great Sepoy rebellion in 1857. Its suppression marked the termination of that long period of disorder and confusion which had followed the downfall of the Mogul Empire, With 1858 there dawned a new era in the country, an  era of peace and prosperity. The rule of a trading bodywho naturally used to look more to the interests of their shareholders than to the welfare of those under its charge was now over. The English East India Company wasabolished, and the responsibility of administration takenover by the Crown. This change of hands was but anexpression of a change in the conception of Government.For the first time in the annals of British connection withIndia, it was declared that the " contentment of the people and their happiness and prosperity " l was the chief aimof the rulers. New and modern administrative standards were set up, and the functions of Goverment, hitherto limited to the primary duties of justice, police and revenue, were considerably enlarged. Not only was the administrative machinery thoroughly overhauled and reconstructed, but new departments were opened both in the Imperialand Provincial Governments for meeting the ever-growing needs of the people. In fact the whole apparatus of moderncivilised administration came into existence, which withthe advance of time has gone on increasing in efficiency, offering to the people of the soil greater and greater opportunities of association and direction. This change in the aim and policy of Government andthe moral and material improvement it has worked since its inception, has succeeded in creating an entirely newatmosphere in the country which has gradually awakenedthe people to a sense of the needs and requirements of modern life and acquainted them with the principles andstandards of modern administration as understood in England. 1 See Queen Victoria's Proclamation, 1858.  l More important than this atmospheric influence generatedby the improved and modern methods of government, hasbeen the specific influence exerted upon the minds of the people by the system of education established in the country. To trace the early history of this system or the steps bywhich the British Government slowly came to recognise the education of the people as part of its administrative functions is beyond the scope of this chapter. Nor wouldsuch an attempt be profitable from the point of view of Urdu literature. For the Indian Muslims, among whomthis literature has grown and flourished, did not interest themselves in any particular manner in the educational activity of the Government, and in fact tacitly held aloof from it until the system was in full working order. It is sufficient to point out here that by the time the Muslims, having received a rude awakening by the Great Indian Mutiny, realised the necessity of marching with the times and participating in the governmental system of education so far monopolised by the Hindus for whom it was originally designed, the period, first of reluctance by the British Government to interest themselves in the education of the people, and then of controversy as regards the nature of instruction to be imparted, whether on Western or Oriental lines, had long passed away. By the year 1859, the Government was committed definitely to a system of education carried on by means of schools and colleges and universities fashioned on English models and providing instruction in 1 For an account of the successive stages in the educational policy of the British Government in India leading to the establishment of the system under reference see the following : Arthur Howell, Education in British India prior to 1854. Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India. Trevelyan, Life of Macaulay, ed. 1881. Edinburgh Review, " Indian Missions," 1808. Report of the Indian Education Commission, 1882.  Western sciences, arts, history, philosophy and literature through the medium of the English language. It must be observed that the demand for such a systemof education did not originate with the Government, althoughthey ultimately realised the need for it, but came fromprivate agencies such as the several Christian Missions established in the country, who had in fact anticipated and, in a way, even prepared the ground for its establishment, and from the Hindu intelligentsia, themselves the products of missionary education, at the head of whom was Raja RamMohan Roy, founder of the new eclectic creed of BramoSamaj. The Indian Muslims, obsessed with the sense of their own self-importance, and impotently disdainful of the encroachment of Western thought into a country where theyhad held the mastery for several centuries together, remainedsullenly indifferent. Neither profiting by what was liberal and wholesome in their own Islamic training, nor willing to recognise the good in what the new system offered, they let the Hindus steal a march on them until there arose amongthem a man with a large vision and foresight who made it his life-work to fight against this apathy and bring back his co-religionists to the path of progress and enlightenment. The writings of Sir Sayyid A^mad and of the small band of workers who made it a common cause with him to give a new life and a new outlook to their community will be noticed later on as the first expression in Urdu literature of that reaction to Western thought which had already begunto manifest itself in the activity and literature of the Hindus. Suffice it to mention here that since his trumpet call first went round, there has come about a great change in the attitude of the Muslims towards Western education. TheMuhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh founded bySir Sayyid Afrmad in 1876, now grown into a statutory residential and teaching University, and similar Musliminstitutions though on a smaller scale established in different influx of Muslimyouth into Government and other non-denominationalcolleges and schools all over the country, and the inauguration a few years ago of the Osmania University at the capital of the premier Muslim State of Hyderabad, bear unmistakabletestimony to the response which the Muslim communityin India has so far made to this new system. As a result, in common with their Hindu compatriots, the Muslim educated classes have had, during the last halfcentury, an ever-widening scope and opportunity for the study of Western sciences, arts, philosophy and literature. In this scheme of education, English has occupied apeculiarly important place. An acquaintance with it hasformed an indispensable preliminary to the acquisition of modern knowledge. It has been the only medium of instruction in almost every subject from the lowest stage in secondary school education to the highest in the University. For this reason and for the fact that the University courses of study have been heavily loaded with English languageand literature, they have had to devote to this subject greater time and attention than to any other, including their own vernaculars. In consequence, whatever their individual interest in any particular branch of knowledge, they havebeen obliged to make English literature a special feature of their education, and to acquaint themselves not merelywith the writings of the leading English poets and prose writers, their mind and art, but with the various movements,political, social, religious, literary, intellectual or aesthetic, of which these writers have either been the spokesmenor the products. As the study of English literature would, however, be incomplete without a reference to thedifferent influences from the Continent which have affected its development, they have had necessarily, though in the majority of cases in a casual manner, to acquaint themselves, primarily through English translations, with the literary models and ideals not only of classic Greece and Rome butalso of modern Europe. Thus it is that the system of Governmental education established in the country with its great emphasis on the study of English language andliterature, has opened out to the Indian mind a boundlesstreasure-house of large and inspiring ideas and ideals whichwe are accustomed to associate with the healthier and nobler side of English life and English culture. 

(v) RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MOVEMENTS 

Religious and Social. The first results of this new training were felt, as was indeed anticipated and foreseen by its promoters long ago, 1 in a natural desire on the part of those imbued with the new ideas to apply them to the improvement of the religious, social and political condition of their own country. The Hindus were the first to enter the field, as was natural under the circumstances. Centuries of political subjection and age-long acquiescence in a degrading social order and submission to the religious domination of Brahminic priesthood had left them in greater need of somequickening influence which might set them free. When,therefore, with the establishment of peace and order in the country, the necessary awakening came to them from the West by means of Western education to which they had so kindly taken from the beginning, the more thoughtful andearnest minds among them naturally felt a strong inclination to seek freedom from the social and religious shackles whichhad bound them so long. Some there were among these who were bold enough to welcome all that was of goodreport from any source whatsoever, whether Christianity or 1 See Charles Grant's Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects in Great Britain, particularly with Respect to Morals ; and on the Means of Improving it, 1792; Parliamentary Papers relating to the Affairs of India : General, Appendix I j Public (1832), pp. 3-89. Also Maucalay's Minute in Favour of English Education, 1835.  Hinduism or Islam, or any philosophic system of the Eastor West, so long as it contributed to their moral and social welfare. That was the attitude reflected and embodied in the Bengali movement of Brahmo-Samdj. There were, however,those who were not able to go so far and in fact were hardlyin sympathy with the heterodox tendencies of the BramoSamdj, but were at the same time alive to the need of arresting the tide of scepticism which was passing over their intellectuals, which could not, however, be satisfied unless the Hindu faith were remoulded to suit the requirements of modern life. Not willing to introduce reform merely in the name of the new ideas from the West, and at the same timefinding not much inspiration from the prevailing religion, they looked back into the dim and distant past, to the timewhen Hindu society was still in the primitive stage and Hindureligion was but a simple creed unencumbered by later Brahminic additions, and tried to seek for some semblance of authority for any change they contemplated in their religious and social life. This was the disposition which found expression in the establishment of the Arya-Samaj and the Sandtana Dharma. Midway between these two, betweenthe eclecticism of Brahmo-Samdj and the orthodoxy of Sandtana Dharma, there have arisen a few schools of thoughtlike the Theosophical, which represent compromises in varying degrees. The same feeling for religious and social reform was also felt among the Muslim community. Prominent amongthose who associated themselves with this movement amongthe Muslims were Sir Sayyid Ahmad of Aligarh and Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadiyan, representing each a particular section of the community. Opinions may differ as to howfar these reformers received their stimulus from the newideas of the West Indeed the followers of Mirza GhulamAfrmad would even suggest absolute divine inspiration underlying the activity of their religious leader. Still, making all allowance for honest belief, the broad fact remains that these reformers were, as their writings indicate, undeniablythe products, direct or indirect, of those influences fromthe West which, as the result of English administration and English education, were spreading all over the country. Political. The same has to be said of the political movements which arose in the wake of the establishment of the new educational system. In this sphere, as in that of the social and religious, the Hindus were again the first to takethe initiative. The ideas of freedom and democracy for which England has avowedly stood since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which the study of Mill and Burkein the Universities had transmitted to the Indian students, could not but react on their pliable minds. They engenderedin them a growing feeling for political advancement, a feeling which found expression in the several organisations which the English educated class among the Hindus founded in different parts of tbe country, like the Mahdjana Sabhd in Madras,the Presidency Association in Bombay, the SarvajanikSabhd in Poona and the Indian National Congress. The Muslims were rather slow to move in politics and werenot able to fall into line with the Hindus until veryrecently. Their immediate and primary need was moderneducation. So, while the others were striving to get moreand more voice in the administration, the Muslims, led bySir Sayyid Ahmad and with the help of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference and its auxiliary agencies, devoted themselves exclusively to the cause of Muslim education. Till the beginning of this century theyhad absolutely no idea of directly associating themselveswith the political movements of the country. In fact theyviewed them with suspicion and distrust. They preferred to let the English govern rather than help their erstwhile subjects, the Hindus, to rule over them. Such an attitude could not, however, last long. They saw how from day to day the British Goverment were gradually giving way to the clamour of the Hindu politicians. They were thus forced to realise that they would be left considerably behindhand in the race of life if they did not bestir themselves and marchwith the current. Thus came into existence the All-India Muslim League in 1908 and its affiliated associations, which, though started as defensive political organisations, were bythe pressure of events forced in 1916 to identify themselves with the aims and aspirations of the Indian National Congress.

 (vi) PRESS 

As a complement to all these movements, and as a necessary feature of modern life, has come the Indian Press, which has contributed in no small measure to the spread of the newideas among a much wider public than any of the other channels mentioned above has been capable of reaching. The history of this Press goes back indeed to the daysof Hastings and Cornwallis. But for a long time its scope was very limited. It was owned and edited by Englishmenfor the benefit of the small colony of English residents stationed either at the provincial capitals or in the interior of the country. After the Indian Mutiny, however, this Press entered upon a quite new existence. The improvement of communications within the country by means of roads, railways and telegraphs, and with Europe, particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal, contributed materially to its efficiency as a news agency, and the large influx of Europeans into the country in different capacities, as well as the rise of a new class of intelligentsia, the products of the newly established Universities, greatly increased its circulation. It also assumed, as a consequence, its legitimate function of directing and educating public opinion. But its views did not always find favour with the politically mindedclass of English educated Indians, who naturally felt the need of having organs of their own. As a result, a number of newspapers and periodicals were started in English in different provinces by Indians, who, however, soon realised the limitations of such an English Press in a country where the vast majority of the people were ignorant of the language. Forwhile it fulfilled a very useful and necessary purpose in mouldingIndian opinion along certain well-defined lines, and acquainting the Government with the aims and aspirations of the people as understood by the English educated class, it couldnot reach the masses and serve as a lever for their social uplift. Hence arose the vernacular Press, to which increasing attention has been paid in recent years by the leaders of Indian thought, both Hindu and Muslim, and which hassteadily grown in power and in usefulness. This vernacular Press includes a large number of periodicals and covers a wider range of topics than the English Press. While not neglecting political questions, it has devotedspecial attention to social, religious and literary subjects, and has tlms been instrumental in conveying, in howeversimple and crude a manner, to the Indian public at large, practically all the ideas symbolised by Western education. 

(vii) CONCLUSION 

Thus, in these several ways, through an improved formof British administration, through the new system of Westerneducation and the various movements which it has given rise to, as well as through the Press, the lives and thoughtsof the people have been profoundly influenced by the newideas and impulses which have come from the West. Thecumulative result has been something phenomenal. Seldomin the history of the world, in modern times, has any countrybeen exposed to such a sudden and lurid glare of vitalising ideas and conceptions. The nearest approach to this is perhaps the Renaissance in Europe, of which these ideas are themselves largely the outcome. Indeed in many respects the present movement in India is a much more powerfulone. For, however great the share which the Renaissanceultimately had in the creation of Modern Europe, we shouldnot forget that in its early stages it was comparatively a veryunassuming movement. It was not, like the modern awakening in India, the result of the living contact of one race andculture with another; it was merely a rediscovery of the neglected and long-forgotten literature and art of an almostextinct people. Nor was it so comprehensive in its scope, embracing nearly every sphere of human activity, nor did it operate over so wide an area or over so vast a population, nor again did it possess all those facilities which exist in these days for the wide and rapid dissemination of its ideas. NThe change in India would have been much greater hadthis movement taken rise among a less heterogeneous people at a more or less common level of culture. As it is, people in the most varying degrees of civilisation, from the highest to the lowest, have been brought under its influence. Theresult has not therefore been uniform. Even in classes that have reacted most, the influence has not been as deep as one would expect. For the old order still continues to exist side by side with the new. As men cannot entirely cut themselves off from the past, the new ideas have necessarily not had the fullest freedom. This fact should therefore be clearly kept in mind when we come to review their results in the field of literature.