This document runs to 182 pages, and perhaps deserves eventual re-publication in its own right; it may perhaps primarily be of interest to Indian scholarship. It covers his travel round the world in 1914-15.

JJ had originally intended to travel through France, Germany, Austria and Turkey before going on to India. He had intended to take my mother with him; it had been planned as a sort of 'working honeymoon'. They landed in France, and then the war broke out, and they had to return. In the end JJ and my mother departed for India on November 21 1914, arriving in Bombay on December 19. My mother then went on separately to Australia, to visit her mother's sisters, with the intention of meeting up again with my father in Java, and going on to China, Japan, and back across the US. My father had therefore the chance to spend time in India in 'investigative journalist' mode rather than in tourist mode, and this adds depth to the Indian section of the Report.

In his introduction he declares that it was written in 1916, and that his thinking had evolved considerably since then. Since it did not in the end get published until 1921, he doubted if it still possessed interest, due to the many problems with with the world was then confronted, consequent on the war. He indicates in footnotes areas where his opinions have radically altered.

I here will abstract its contents, under headings which reflect JJ's subdivision of the material.

India: Initial General Impressions

Landing in Bombay JJ is immediately impressed by the population density, the smell, the lack of sanitation, and the contrast between the native quarters and the European and commercial areas. He sees however no obstacle to progress and a sense of citizenship emerging under the bureaucratic rule of law as provided by the British, and feels that it should continue, as being a better alternative to anarchy. (He has here a footnote to the effect that this was written before the Amritsar massacre!).

He seeks in vain in Indian history evidence for the type of political community with which we are familiar in Europe. The concept of family and kinship has not begun to be transcended by those of the citizen and the nation-state. An important obstacle to this is the caste system, which exists not only among the Hindus but also among the Muslims. He remarks acidly that among Europeans in India the caste system also de facto exists; they are far from giving a good exemplar for the principle of egalitarian citizenship, to judge from the unwritten rules governing access to the 'station club'.

There is a small proportion of people who understand and write English, and who have had their training in an English environment. It is from this elite that Indian nationalism draws its support; JJ points out the anomaly that Indian nationalist elite wants to impose its own rule on the Indian masses using second-hand English principles, without any Indian character at all. He counterposes the need for a sense of Indian citizenship to arise from the bottom up, capable of modernising and getting rid of child-marriage, suttee and other barbarisms. The most government can do is remove obstacles from the path of reforms wanting to arise from the bottom up.

He smells corruption in the legal system, where barristers earn more per day than the judge does in a month. The temptation for the litigant to square the judge is considerable. He instances cases where the case system has caused public money to be abused, for example in wells located so as to enable caste based exclusion from their use.

Despite these problems JJ, perhaps with undue optimism, sees at least initially no obstacles to the development of a healthy sense of citizenship, and we are led to hope that in the following sections at least embryonic versions of this quality will be detected and brought to light.

Spiritual Contrast between India and the West

Addressing the question of how it is that so few British are able to rule so many Indians, JJ homes in initially on the way in which the British in India do not put down roots, keeping their distance, administering even-handed justice from on high, according to their lights. The British administrators in India are far from being 'crusted Tories', and are often supporters of progressive causes on their home ground.

He then comes round to the Hindu and Muslim religions as being perhaps key factors. Islam he identifies as standing in the same relation to Judaism as does Christianity, but Islam in India he finds heavily influenced by the Hindu majority environment.

Hindus are born not made; Hinduism does not claim universal status. There is an underlying monotheistic concept in the form of the impersonal all-pervading Brahma, of which the world as a whole is a material manifestation. He tentatively develops the parallel with the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit, and links this with experience of the Christian missions.

On the negative side however there is the doctrine of the Karma, which links actions with the fortunes of the agent not only in the current life, but also in subsequent lives, through the process of transmigration. Thus one's present misfortunes being a consequence of bad actions in a previous existence tend to encourage fatalism and submission. This in turn leads to an aspiration to escape from the painful necessity of living for ever, and this is achievable by giving up actions and becoming an ascetic. This leads to the statistic that in 1901 there were 5.2M religious beggars in India.

He touches on Buddhism, the Upanishads and their interpreter Sarkaracharya, of the 9th century AD, and his Path of Wisdom, leading ultimately to the identity of the liberated soul with Brahma. In this context he popularised the doctrine of Maya or illusion.

This highly philosophical religion is impossible to follow in detail except for a select few, but for purposes of popularising the concepts among the unlettered, Brahma was 'considered to have become incarnate in the god Krishna, who might be represented in the form of an idol and approached with prayer and sacrifice by even the humblest and most ignorant'.

Popular Hinduism

In this section JJ goes into the origins, dynamics and current statistics of the caste system. It is conjectured that it originated in the need of the Aryan invaders to differentiate themselves from their darker predecessors. There were originally four castes: Brahmans (priests), Kshatria (warriors), Vaisya (artisans) and Sudras (menials). These subdivided, and in 1901 there were 2358 distinct castes distributed among 43 racial or tribal groups, 1800 of these subdivisions being Brahmans. The complexity of the religious concepts imposes the need for a numerous and skilled priesthood.

Sometime movements to eradicate the caste system emerge, but these simply tend to be come new castes. It matters little what one believes, as long as one obeys the ceremonial procedures appropriate to one's caste.

A visit to the Golden Temple at Benares is described; the city remains basically Hindu despite the presence of the mosque in the courtyard, built by Aurangzeb the Mogul emperor, to show his contempt for the religion of his Hindu subjects, an act of fanaticism of which echoes persist to this day.

JJ then goes on to describe the funerary practices on the banks of the Ganges, remarking on the distinction between rich and poor, the latter often being rendered gruesome by insufficient wood in the pyre. A European observer would tend to be glad to have been suitably vaccinated against the diseases, of which the sources were everywhere evident.

Education

The question had first posed itself 100 years previously, in the form, should education be Oriental or Western? The first few existing colleges taught Oriental knowledge, but then Lord Macaulay in 1835 decreed that their 'absurd science, metaphysics, physics and theology' should be abandoned, that education should be Western, and through English (1). This restricted education to the upper castes.

A Commission sat in 1882, but had little or no impact on primary education, which remained unfunded and dependent on local fee-paying. Such primary education as existed was based on rote-learning, and took no account of local realities; it was implemented by half-educated teachers on a miserable salary. JJ however looked forward to the extension of universal free primary education sooner or later, and in a footnote referenced the 1920 Report of the Calcutta University Commission, which he regarded as an excellent document.

There was however resistance to education together of Hindus of different castes, and indeed Hindus with Muslims; in the latter case the opposition came primarily from the Muslim side, as the Hindus would accept a purely secular form of education. Under the purdah girls disappeared out of the system at age 10, when they were married off.

Apparently on the basis of the experience of his elder brothers (James, John and William, with whom he certainly made contact when in India), JJ identifies the main obstacle to compulsory education as being the fact that local rates were limited by law, due to the influence of the major landowners at State level. The Government made the mistake of opposing compulsory education as such, rather than leaving this decision to the States, where it would be opposed by the wealthy, thus turning local progressive nationalist agitation for education against the local landowners, rather than against the Government.

Current statistics indicated that 18% of boys and 0.35% of girls received primary education at the time JJ was there.

Secondary education, being the road to Civil Service jobs, is in demand, but its quality JJ equates at best with the upper primary level in France. There is however no extern examination system, and the schools being basically private businesses, owned by their head masters, a high pass level is necessary if market share is to be kept.

The same general approach is duplicated at third level, with the result that there has been '...turned adrift on India a class of half-educated students or graduates who are a source of much social and political discontent..'. JJ is highly critical of the over-dependence on use of text-books and rote-learning throughout the system, to the detriment of the ability to genuinely understand and to reason.

He is inclined to blame the Macaulay policy for this, and to call for a positive approach to education in the vernacular and in their own classical traditions, as embodied in the wealth of Sanscrit texts, while accepting a role for English as a national lingua franca. English should not be the medium of instruction until the basics have been taught in the vernacular, and a competent level of English has been learned.

He concludes by urging the upgrading of the Indian university system with the aid of temporary appointments for world-class scholars on secondment, so as to aid in the development of an equivalent Indian elite educated in all aspects of the culture of both east and west. In a footnote he sees his conclusions vindicated by the 1920 Calcutta Report, which he urges should be circulated to all UK universities, given his view '...as a College don, (that) one-fourth of (his) academic life is wasted in helping to carry on examinations three-fourths of which are educationally useless...'.(2)

Administrative Machinery

There was no uniform administrative system under the Indian Government, which was led centrally by the 'Governor-General in Council'. This included a few token Indians, but had a European majority. Bombay, Madras and Bengal had Governors with Executive Councils. The various Provinces had Legislative Councils with elected Indian majorities. Their administrative systems were however dependent on the dates on which they had been annexed.

Bengal had in 1906 been partitioned by Lord Curzon(3); this led to agitations, so that it was modified in 1911, with Assam to the east becoming a Chief Commissionership, and a new province, Bihar, set up with a Crown Governor. Much of JJ's analysis was done in Bihar; I am conjecturing that this was because his elder brother William was influential there (I recollect some of his comments on Bihar after he retired to Ireland in the 1940s), and perhaps also John and James.

The head of the Government of Bihar is a Lieutenant-Governor assisted by an Executive Council. It is administered in five Divisions, each under a Commissioner. Each Division consists of a number of Districts, each under the joint rule of a District Magistrate and a Collector. The District, throughout India, was the most important unit of local administration, being, in JJ's words, 'a kind of microcosm of the Government of India as a whole'. He identified it as a 'self-subsistent entity to an extent which it is difficult for people from home to realise'.

The fact that the police came directly under the Magistrate suggested to JJ that executive and judicial functions were somewhat unhealthily intertwined. The qualities expected of the District Magistrate included at least familiarity with, or even mastery of: law, economics, engineering, agriculture, archaeology, ethnology, sanitation, estate management, excise, police and local administration, supported by psychology and philosophy. JJ goes through a typical day in the life of such a paragon, presumably his elder brother, and it is possible to detect constraints on his objectivity, though there is perhaps a hint of 'tongue in cheek'.

Bureaucracy

This section is a sort of an aside, in which JJ compares actually existing bureaucracy on the British-Indian model with the then current situation in Ireland, unfavourably to the latter. In the Indian situation the impersonal and mechanistic aspect of bureaucracy, to which the central government aspires, is moderated by the existence of real power at District level, operated by real people who have to live there. A District Magistrate-Collector on leave in England encountered through his GP a local health care problem, involving an epidemic; local hospital resources were idle but could not be obtained without recourse to London; our Indian Civil Service friend (probably James or John) would have solved the analogous problem in India, had it occurred in his District, at the stroke of a pen.

In Ireland the Irish administration had developed various functions like the Congested District Board, the Land Commission and the Department of Agriculture. These were all centralist functions, without local co-ordination, except for an attempt made by Lord Macdonnell, who had Indian Civil Service experience. (This latter point is in a JJ 1920 footnote). One can see in this argument, and in that later based on the role of the French Prefet in his 1916 Report, the roots of JJ's lifetime concern with bottom-up effective local co-ordination of resources, based on local knowledge. How to introduce the democratic control-loop into this local power-based co-ordination JJ at this stage did not resolve; later he came around to the co-operative movement as being the key to this.

He concludes by remarking that unless the question of real power at local level is taken in hand in any Irish administration under an Irish Parliament, the latter will become an ineffective talking-shop. In a subsequent (1920) footnote he backtracks slightly on his support for the French and Indian systems, referencing WH Dawson's 'Municipal Life and Government in Germany'.

The Work of the District Magistrate

In this section JJ has some critical words to say about the Indian legal profession, which tends to be parasitical on the economic life of the people, and to seek to prolong and complicate disputes, viewing the bankrupting of their clients with unconcern. He gives some examples which suggest that legal practice in India is significantly dirtier than in Ireland as it was then.

The District Magistrate goes on tour with a tent, and hears cases at a portable table. While on tour in this mode, the Magistrate picks up diverse bits of local knowledge; he is the government, accessible, and with a human face. This aspect of the government of India JJ identifies as a desirable norm, absent in the UK itself, as instanced by the scandal of the starving soldiers wives during the War; they were advised to write to or call at the War Office for their separation allowances.

To conclude he mentions the practice of 'coolie-catching', where recruiters from Assam come looking for indentured labour to work the tea plantation, from which they were seldom able to return, being treated like prisoners. This practice he suggests is in process of reform, due to humanitarian pressure from the Missions, supported by the District Officers.

I cannot help wondering whether JJ was not, in this investigation, somewhat of a prisoner of the administration, who did their best to feed him with the appropriate PR stories. Despite this suspicion, enough critical comments break through to make the overall account credible.

The Joint Magistrate (who is an Indian civilian)

The Service was in process of apprenticing Indian assistants, and JJ sat in on one such court. One matter dealt with was the renewal of gun-licences, a process involving verification of a marking on each weapon. This process was necessary for Indians but not for Europeans; the latter could obtain and carry firearms without any formality. This opened up the possibility of Indians becoming armed unofficially through Europeans of like mind for revolutionary purposes. JJ remarks on the need to make the licencing system universal.

A leopard was produced, with a view to collecting the bounty (this being the then practice; they were regarded as a pest, and had not yet assumed the status of 'endangered species'). After the money was paid the skull was broken. It seems that there had been a snake bounty, and some enterprising Indians had begun to farm the snakes to get the bounty, the dead snakes being also produced successively at various bounty-points. So if on payment of the bounty the skull is broken, the market for leopards will be restricted by their being paid for only once.

The Sub-Division

I quote: '..it is even said that a man has more power for good or evil as Sub-Divisional Officer than he is ever likely to obtain again unless he becomes Lieutenant-Governor..'. These were Indians or Eurasians of the 'Provincial' service, usually in their 20s or 30s; it was regarded as a training-ground for native recruitment to the Civil Service. One such had administered a major flood-control project on the Ganges, which JJ had compared to Irish experience of attempting to get things done with the Shannon or the Bann by remote and conflicting Dublin departments. JJ's support for strong local authority was reinforced by this Indian, and by subsequent French, experience.

The Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) has to deal locally with the panchayat or village committee of five, elected by residents, '...who levy a tax for the payment of the village chaukidar or 'watchman'. The fairness of the assessment procedures were checked by the SDO. This embryonic local democracy however JJ gained the impression was in decline.

JJ goes on to comment on problems connected with payment of rent in kind to landlords, and in this sort of situation the SDO tended to side with the landlords. We have here a sort of re-enactment of the scene in 19th century Ireland, with which JJ identified.

In some final comments on the legal procedure, JJ comments on the complexity and cost of the English-style system, where in the court 'cooked stories' are regaled by often intimidated witnesses. This can sometimes be countered by fieldwork by a conscientious SDO, who gets the 'raw story' from the locality where the event happened.

Judicial Procedure and the Law of Evidence

In this section JJ gives some detailed accounts of cases where the application of the English laws of evidence constituted positive barriers to justice being done. He suggests that Japanese procedures might have been more appropriate, and stresses the importance of people in the judiciary having executive experience. One key case quoted at length involved a pamphlet by a Hindu political activist attacking the local Muslim community, accusing them of using the books of Hindu sacred libraries as fuel for their Turkish baths, slaughtering sacred cows etc. The author, one Sital Prasad, had the MS in his house, and readily admitted having written it. An attempt to prosecute him for incitement to violence foundered on the basis of English law of evidence regarding confessions. The case went on for several months, and went to higher courts, producing on its way various contradictory rulings.

(One is tempted, with hindsight, to infer that there was tacit support in high places for the fomenting of inter-communal violence, a process which led eventually to Mountbatten's partition of India in 1948. RJ Dec 1999.)

Agricultural Conditions and Agricultural Credit

In this section JJ goes into the historical background of land tenure and tax collection in India. Under the Moguls tax was a proportion of harvest, and was farmed out to collectors, who took a cut. The British substituted a fixed rate per unit area, and recognised the Mogul tax-farmers or Zamindars as a sort of embryonic squirearchy. This made the villages more financially vulnerable in times of drought or flood. Under the Moguls the tax-farmers were supposed to keep back a 10% commission. Under the British this situation over time became reversed, and in effect a wealthy land-owning class was created. The government in the end had to intervene in the interests of the tenants, under the Bengal Tenancy Acts.

This however had the effect of passing control from the landlords to the moneylenders, a consequence of the undermining of the village community by the process of encouraging individual peasant proprietorship. Credit had been handled at village level via the village bania who originally acted as a sort of community banker, without the bad odour associated with gombeenism. Once land-ownership at the individual level came in, credit became based on land as security, and to be in the form of a legal contract between individuals rather than a customary arrangement under common supervision. The bania became the usurer, who gained land by dispossession of its occupiers, who were unable to pay back loans under usurious interest, often as high as 75%. 'The village community was thus destroyed, and a regime of economic individualism was entrenched behind a barrier of law.'

At the time JJ was in India (1914) '..a law to prevent the civil courts from being used as an instrument for the extortion of usurious demands om moneylenders was in contemplation.' In JJ's 1920 footnote he says that the courts are now allowed to use their discretion in this matter, but he had no knowledge as to how it worked.

JJ produces anecdotal evidence of how moneylenders in cahoots with corrupt lawyers were able to forge documentation 'proving' indebtedness against activists in the co-operative movement in Bihar. Another anecdote relates how a group of debtors, despairing of the use of the law to escape from usury, agreed that the moneylender must be killed. An assassin was hired for 80 rupees, but a dispute arose as to whether the amount should be paid before or after. In the end one of the debtors agreed to do the job for free. The judge let off the murderer, being himself critical of the ability of the courts to deliver justice in such cases.

JJ concludes this section with an estimate that 40% of all landholders were indebted to the extent of double the rent value of their land. After this statement of the problem, JJ turns to what he identifies as the remedy:

The Co-operative Movement

This section takes up 17 pages and reflects JJ's enthusiasm for this bottom-up democratic approach to economic development. The movement goes back to 1892, when the Madras government sent Sir Frederick Nicholson on a roving commission to Europe to study how the co-operative movement addressed the question of agricultural indebtedness. In this context he encountered Sir Horace Plunkett and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), as well as the Raffeisen movement. It was soon realised that special legislation would be necessary.

The first Co-operative Credit Societies Act was passed in 1904 when Lord Curzon was Viceroy, and JJ regards this as being to his credit, however much he was execrated by articulate nationalist India. A further Act in 1912 provided for the appointment of a Registrar of Co-operative Societies by local government, and went further than the 1896 UK Friendly Societies Act, by providing for a propagandist and organising role for the Registrar.

JJ then goes into the details of how co-operative credit organisations were set up, the key motivation being the substitution of of an interest regime of 12% on deposits and 18% on loans, this being a vast improvement on the 75% charged by the moneylenders. The purpose of the loan is discussed at lending-time; one got longer terms for sinking a well than for a wedding; the effect was to restrict extravagant expenditure on ceremonial feasts, and encourage productive investment.

These village-level credit co-ops federated and rapidly there developed in Bengal an extended co-operative banking system. In 1914 there were 14566 societies with 661,859 members, worth about £3M; this is small fry by the overall standards of the Indian population, but the influence of the growing movement, and its role in training people for citizenship, was considerable. There was also evidence that it was helping to break down castes, in that low-cast people were taking responsible positions, and high-caste people did not have an automatic right to more favourable loan terms.

The Calcutta Statesman on December 31 1914 noted the fact that in the Pubjab the joint stock banks had been in trouble while the co-operative banks weathered the storm and improved their position.

In his 1920 note JJ references a book by HW Wolff on 'Co-operation in India' and highlights the process of political citizenship training in the co-operative movement, leading to the possibility of enhanced local government.

He contrasts the India situation with that in Ireland, where representative local democracy had fallen under the influence of gombeen-politicians, and co-operative initiatives tended to be attacked as conspiracies against trade. The State in India he regarded as a relatively benevolent bureaucracy, in a position to act progressively without gombeen influence. I quote: '..Imagine a Parliament consisting of John Dillons, Lord Clanrickardes, and Sir Edward Carsons, and you will have a faint idea of what an elected Indian political assembly would be like. A proposal to establish co-operative societies for the benefit of rural India would the strangled at birth by a Parliament thus constituted...'.

This leads naturally on to:

Comparisons between India and Ireland

In this section JJ further emphasises the mutual support between the Indian Departments of Agriculture and the Registrars as being essential to the progress of the co-operative movement, and warns against the influence of the emerging gombeen political activists. Paradoxically, though JJ is a democrat in economic matters, in matters political he is convinced that representative democracy on the British model will throw up the worst type of self-interested gombeen elements.

'The machinery of representative government does not work well in Ireland, and if the Irish people were to continue electing to the Irish parliament the same type of man they have been sending to Westminster, no scheme of Home Rule would work satisfactorily..'.

Remember that JJ wrote this in 1916. In his April 1920 footnote he adds: 'nowadays Irish MPs go to Wormwood Scrubbs, Dartmoor, or Mountjoy, and the fleshpots of Westminster are tabooed.'

It it worth mentioning that in his Civil War in Ulster he had proposed effectively a PR scheme for elections under Home Rule. In this Report he does not expand on this, though he concludes by hoping that '..Ireland...will intellectually emancipate herself from the traditions of British politics to which her existing Parliamentarians have succumbed...'.

Labour conditions and slavery

In this 8-page section JJ goes into some detail regarding how the labour market worked in India. Enslavement for debt, under the harauri system, was prevalent in Bihar and Madras. This relationship was supported tacitly under English law of contract, and the relationship in fact became hereditary.

One way of escape for such slaves was to join a gang of coolies recruited for service in the tea plantations of Assam or Ceylon. This however was to suffer a similar fate. Recruits for coolie labour on these estates seldom if ever returned to their villages; it was a life-sentence.

The factory system used labour on a similar system, in gangs under a 'jobber', '...usually a Mahommedan of good physique, and thus able to inspire terror if necessary... if he is dissatisfied for any reason he takes his men out on strike and obtains employment for them elsewhere..'.

The office staff, or babus, often act as money-lenders to the mill hands, so that there is here a market for the type of co-operative credit union as indicated earlier, and JJ notes its beginnings.

Conditions on the tea plantations in Assam however were not subject to the rule of law, as the Government inspectorate (ie the District Officers), in these remote parts, had no option but to accept the hospitality of the isolated planters, with whom they share facilities and play billiards, to the detriment of their objectivity in cases where a coolie may have been beaten to death. In some cases a planter even acts as medical adviser, and writes the death certificate, asserting 'natural causes'.

JJ concludes by remarking that tea plantations yield about 15% on the capital invested in them. Planters 'lead a very patriarchal life, and... seem to be a law unto themselves..'.

Christian Missionary Effort

The four million or so Indian Christians tended, according to JJ, to belong predominantly to the lower end of the social spectrum, and this led to prejudice against them on the part of the upper-crust Hindus, especially the Brahmans. There had been up to the middle of the 19th century some recruitment from members of the educated classes into Christianity, but this trend had been diverted by the Brahmo Samaj movement, which was a reformed religion rooted in Hindu philosophy, but incorporating many Christian concepts.

Experienced missionaries had developed a respect for Indian religions as a result of prolonged contact, and JJ makes the case that missionaries should at least learn something about Indian civilisation before going there, and serve an apprenticeship. He dismisses as false the Roman analogy, with Christianity projected as a unifying political force for India.

Religious Movements other than Hindu

Expanding on the philosophy of the Brahmo Samaj, JJ identifies this as a progressive force, with its members prominent in social reform movements against caste, child marriage, right of widows to re-marry etc. There was also the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay, for which the social reform and nation-building aspects had priority. This movement attempted to show that the current abuses were not fundamental to the Scriptures, constituting a relatively recent corrupt imposition.

The purdah system is most prevalent where Islam is strong, and has overflowed into Hindu practice from that source.

The progressive writings of the Brahmo Samaj however were negatived by the practice of their leaders in permitting early marriage of their own daughters, leading to schisms.

A movement called the Arya Samaj(4) was founded in 1875 by one Swami Dayananda Saraswati, against Hindu idolatry and back to Vedas monotheism. These ideas were further developed by Pandit Guru Datta, who was familiar with Western philosophy as well as Eastern. Despite a dogmatic appearance, JJ regards the Aryans as a liberalising influence, and devotes 8 pages to them.

Although it started in Bombay, its current strength was in the Pubjab, whose people JJ sees as somewhat similar to those of Ulster; he attributes the relative success of the co-operative movement in the Punjab to the character of the people there.

The Aryan approach to the caste problem is similar to that of the Prarthana Samaj; in other words, they seek to discredit it as a modern overlay which corrupts the pure Vedas. They organise educational missions in the villages. They claim to be 'catholic' in the sense that they believe their message is not only for the Hindu but for Islam, the Sikh, for India as a whole, and indeed for the world. They have entered into competition with the Christians for the support of the 'depressed classes'.

Their education policy is to use the vernacular, and to teach Western science through it, as part of a total curriculum. Although nominally non-political, the Aryan movement would appear to constitute a force supportive of the Indian National Congress. JJ regards the Aryan movement as relating to Congress as the Gaelic League relates to the Irish Parliamentary Party.

In conclusion JJ predicts that '...if the Arya Samaj grows much greater in strength...it will require the highest qualities of statesmanship to determine the attitude Government should maintain in its relations with it.'

The Caste question

In a 4-page discussion on the caste question JJ picks up on the aftermath of a conference held in 1912 by an organisation known as the Aryan Brotherhood, which organised provocatively a multi-caste dinner in Bombay, including 'untouchables'.

This led to much newspaper agitation, as a result of which some participants were 'outcasted', including one educated Gujarati, whom JJ quotes at length: '...castes are neither trade guilds or associations...they are simply based on birth....castes have become water-tight compartments disintegrating society into irreconcilable factions...the sole function of caste is to limit the area of dining and marrying relations...caste is not able to guide the social, economic, moral or religious live of its members... caste has been broken and is being broken on many sides, though it still has retained its outer shape.'

Government has reacted with permissive legislation, so that the process of breakdown of caste is up to the people themselves. So it would seem that JJ permitted himself some cautious optimism. Regrettably at the end of the millennium (the time of writing this is 31/12/99 RJ) the problem of caste in India would appear still to be a factor in Indian politics.

The Indian National Congress

JJ is critical of the policies of this body, particularly as regards its explicit inability to deal with problems of social reform, and as regards its failure to address the false educational policies which have evolved under the British, which have in fact formed the Indian political class in the image of their overlords.

'Measures of constructive statesmanship like the Co-operative Societies Act owe everything to the intelligence and common sense of an "autocratic and despotic administration", but little or nothing to the political advocacy of those who claim to represent intelligent and educated India.'

If Congress is to be taken seriously, it needs to look into questions like the use of the courts in enforcing usurious contracts, and the 'harauri' system of slavery, as matters of pressing economic reform. Vested interests within Congress itself, as well as religious prejudices, are obstacles to this happening.

JJ concludes by quoting with approval Professor H Stanley Jevons, who had recently been appointed to the Chair of Economics in the University of Allahabad: '...a bureaucracy advised by scientific experts consulting with representatives of all classes...but not controlled by them...will ensure their most safe and rapid progress..'. In his 1920 footnote however JJ adds 'I am not so positive about this now'.

Concluding Remarks about India

JJ advocates that the Government should '..let it be known that it is quite prepared to consider the advisability of gradually resigning its functions when it is no longer n the best interests of India to retain them....it should realise to the full the enormous strength of its own moral position under present circumstances..'.

JJ qualifies this position by saying in his 1920 footnote that 'this was written prior to the Amritsar episode'.

He goes on to advocate that healthy local government should be built up on the foundation of the emerging co-operative movement, rather than on the basis of artificial 'electoral constituencies'. 'Representative bodies composed largely of members elected by co-operative federations might, perhaps, be trusted with legislative power...'.

He concludes the India part of the Report with a statement that he has aimed to arouse curiosity rather than to satisfy it.

(There is among the memorabilia of the Indian trip an 'Illustrated Guide to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway', with photos by J Burlington Smith, Darjeeling. There is also an album of photos, taken by JJ, of various locations in India; the quality is not good, but they may be worth further study in the context.)

We are now up to p135 and clearly JJ spent the most of his time and effort in India; this would have been due to the fact that he had three brothers in the bureaucracy, and therefore would have had a 'family interest' in the matter; as well as an 'inside track'. He then goes on to...

Java

A week in Java, described in 5 pages, was used by JJ to identify some contrasts between the British and the Dutch regimes, with the aid of a book 'The Dutch in Java' by Clive Day, an American student of colonial governments.

The initial objective was purely commercial, with the Dutch East India Company, but the latter found it had to go into the business of government, becoming bankrupt in the process in 1798, when it handed over the the Dutch Government. There was however a period from 1811 to 1816 when Java was under British rule, with TS Raffles in charge. The latter tried to impose some of the procedures picked up in India, as well as a 'forced culture' regime, with cash crops sold to Government at a fixed low price, for selling on at a profit. This did not work.

The village system under the traditional elected headman however remained intact, surviving an attempt by Raffles to create a land-owning squirearchy as intermediary.

The Dutch appear to have a relatively contented people, without a native educated class to cause trouble. Litigation is rare, and the lawyer class not numerous.

On the whole JJ does not seem to have got beneath the surface to the extent that he did in India.

China

In the 9 pages dedicated to China JJ does seem to show evidence of having got at least slightly beneath the touristic surface, picking up on the experience of the Christian missions in Canton, Shanghai and Nanking. Confucianism is regarded by the Christians as a friendly point of contact. The role of the missions in supplying hospitals and schools is apparently appreciated by the Chinese.

The Republic had been declared in 1911 and JJ witnessed something of its early days; he identifies a key actor in the situation as one Yuan Shi-Kai, who would appear to be playing the role of a local war-lord, suppressing the infant Parliament. In one of his 1920 footnotes JJ re-asserts his support for democracy, but points out that it usually results in misgovernment unless it is rooted in the social and economic structure of the community.

The 'Yellow Peril' concept JJ discounts, while being critical of the role of Japan in taking over Manchuria after defeating the Russians in 1905. The seeds of future hostile relations had been sown. He looks forward to the emergence of a reformed and independent Chines nation.

Japan

When leaving for Japan from Shanghai JJ was joined by my mother, who had gone on from India via Australia to spend time with her mother's sister ('Aunt Mudie'). They completed the rest of the trip together.

Writing in 1916 JJ mentions the news of a treaty of defensive alliance between Japan and Russia, which was greeted by the Irish press as a welcome guarantee of long-term peace in the far east, by excluding Germany. JJ is sceptical of this, predicting in the long term trouble between Japan and China on the one hand, and the US on the other.

They landed at Nagasaki and went on up to Kyoto. They were most impressed by the navigable canal which tunnels through the mountain, connecting it with Lake Biwa, and by the extensive use made of hydro-electric generation, even in rural areas.

For in-depth understanding of Japan JJ defers to Lafcadio Hearn. He remarks on the way in which the transition to modernity was made, with the feudal chiefs deferring to the Emperor, thus building a sense of purposeful national unity. There had been no such transition in any European country.

JJ characterised the Japanese as being assimilators rather than imitators. The imported ideas critically and constructively. Their army is on the German model, their navy on the British, and their law on the French. Their education system shows American influence. Local government is thus based on the French prefet system, with the addition that the Minister responsible has to deal with a prefecturial assembly, thus conveying some degree of local democracy, to the extent that the prefet has to live in the territory where he is the representative of the central government.

JJ concludes that while Japan has learned from the West, the West has much to learn from Japan.

America

In the 14 pages JJ dedicates to the USA he manages to convey something of life there in 1915, though in his passage across, via the Santa Fé railroad stopping off at the Grand Canyon, he and my mother were primarily in touristic mode.

JJ remarks that they have plenty of laws, many of which are unenforcible or irrelevant, but not much law. One was, apparently, not allowed to play cards in the train in Texas. One can only race horses in Maryland. Lynch law commands universal respect.

Travel is expensive and some States are in the pockets of the railroad companies. Judges are political nominees. Disputes between State and Federal law are regular occurrences, and one between California and Japan could almost have led to war, with Washington powerless to intervene. Civic life is basically local and State, with no sense of national identity at the all-Union level. Opinions regarding the war were inconsistent and contradictory, with the West apparently pro-German and the East pro-British.

Conflicts in adjacent State laws lead to anomalies, like the fares on the Delaware ferry in Philadelphia, which depend on direction of travel. Competing telephone services do not intercommunicate. There are no all-Union carrying companies; the parcel-post had only just recently been set up.

When in Washington JJ got into conversation about local government, and happened to mention the democratic anomaly which is 'DC', resulting in the citizens of the capital being disfranchised. He found himself quoted in the papers, and subsequently involved in spurious 'interviews' which had been invented by the journalist. 'Lack of Franchise Here a Cause of Amazement' etc. Articles 'As Others See Us' were produced in his name. As a result of this episode he wondered how they could take their press seriously.

As a test-bed for the democratic process, JJ found the US seriously flawed: '...every variety of political disease can be studied to advantage here; in fact, it is a kind of pathological museum of democracy....the idea that the complicated affairs of a modern city can be adequately administered by a number of elected amateurs in their spare time is manifestly absurd..'. He does however identify the utility of the 'city manager' as adopted in some towns.

JJ then ends up with some general conclusions.

He does tend to give undue emphasis to a perceived desirability of 'government by experts' but backtracks on this position in his later footnotes. His main theme however is that '..political democracy by itself, while the economic organisation of society is anti-democratic, is apt to be the exact opposite of what it seems, and we have seen in the case of America how easily its forms adapt themselves to a regime which is really plutocratic..'.

He continues: '...if the co-operative organisation of the wealth-producing and distributing activities of society were more general, the ideal of human brotherhood might be realised...'.

In an extended footnote he suggests that parliament would be more representative and better informed if it was based on representation by professional or occupations. In this context he would see '...the opposition of Capital and Labour...abolished by the integration of industry under democratic control...'.

He concludes with a lengthy quotation from Professor HS Jevons in support of what the latter saw as the enlightened British Indian bureaucracy; JJ accepts Jevons' critique of the failings of bourgeois democracy but draws in on his earlier (1914-16) support for the British Indian model, in a coda which must have been written in 1920.

It is clear from the overall thrust of his conclusions that economic democracy via the co-operative movement, reflected into political democracy with strong local decision-making ability, is his ideal model. The rest of his life was devoted, without much success, to attempting to make this happen in Ireland.

Notes and References

2. This note written in 1920 is a reflection of his then current frustration with the TCD teaching environment, which motivated him away from academic pursuits and towards issues connected with the national independence movement, and later the Barrington Lectures and similar reformist outreach work. He did not begin to generate any scholarly output until the 1930s.

3. The roots of the emergence of Pakistan and the partition of India were laid down in the British rule period; this early Curzon episode was one of many related steps which led to the the process in 1947 being difficult to avoid, despite the best efforts of Gandhi and Nehru. See MJ Akbar, Nehru: the Making of India, Viking, London, 1988; Curzon's role gets mentions on pp56-8 and then retrospectively on p176. He divided Bengal on Hindu-Muslim lines.

4. The Aryan movement gets many mentions by Akbar: their founder Swami Dayanand preached against idolatry and caste (p38); they did however become part of the 'extremist' Hindu wing of the Congress in the 1900s (p56); in the 1920s they were promoting 'purity and reconversion to Hinduism' (p174); by 1926 the Arya Samaj leaders were being denounced by Congress leaders for 'having let loose this (communal) demon once again' (p183). Their origins were in an 1880s episode when Arya priests were 'reonverting' muslims (252). On the whole it seems to have been Hindu evangelical fundamentalist movement. JJ's early evaluation of it was perhaps over-optimistic, though insightful: the Gaelic League similarly evolved along evangelical Catholic-nationalist lines, despite the best efforts of Douglas Hyde.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999