Studies in Literature and History
civil rulership, should have so slightly modified, during seven
centuries of dominion, this infinitely divided polytheism. Of course,
Mohammedanism made many converts, and annexed a considerable number of
the population--yet the effect was rather to stiffen than to loosen
the bonds that held the mass of the people to their traditional
divinities, and to the institution of castes. Moreover the antagonism
of the two religions, the popular and the dynastic, was a perpetual
element of weakness in a Mohammedan empire. In India polytheism could
not be crushed, as in Western Asia, by Islam; neither could it be
controlled and administered, as in Eastern Asia; yet the Moghul
emperors managed to keep on good terms with it, so long as they
adhered to a policy of toleration.
To the Mohammedan empire has succeeded another foreign dominion, which
practises not merely tolerance but complete religious neutrality.
Looking back over the period of a hundred years, from 1757 to 1857,
during which the British dominion was gradually extended over India,
we find that the British empire, like the Roman, met with little or no
opposition from religion. Hindus and Mohammedans, divided against each
other, were equally willing to form alliances with, and to fight on
the side of, the foreigner who kept religion entirely outside
politics. And the British Government, when established, has so
carefully avoided offence to caste or creed that on one great occasion
only, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, have the smouldering fires of
credulous fanaticism broken out against our rule.
I believe the British-Indian position of complete religious neutrality
to be unique among Asiatic governments, and almost unknown in Europe.
The Anglo-Indian sovereignty does not identify itself with the
interests of a single faith, as in Mohammedan kingdoms, nor does it
recognise a definite ecclesiastical jurisdiction in things spiritual,
as in Catholic Europe. Still less has our Government adopted the
Chinese system of placing the State at the head of different rituals
for the purpose of controlling them all, and proclaiming an ethical
code to be binding on all denominations. The British ruler, while
avowedly Christian, ignores all religions administratively,
interfering only to suppress barbarous or indecent practices when the
advance of civilisation has rendered them obsolete. Public
instruction, so far as the State is concerned, is entirely secular;
the universal law is the only authorised guardian of morals; to
expound moral duties officially, as things apart from religion, has
been found possible in China, but not in India. But the Chinese
Government can issue edicts enjoining public morality and rationalism
because the State takes part in the authorised worship of the people,
and the emperor assumes pontifical office. The British Government in
India, on the other hand, disowns official connection with any
religion. It places all its measures on the sole ground of reasonable
expediency, of efficient administration; it seeks to promote industry
and commerce, and material civilisation generally; it carefully avoids
giving any religious colour whatever to its public acts; and the
result is that our Government, notwithstanding its sincere professions
of absolute neutrality, is sometimes suspected of regarding all
religion with cynical indifference, possibly even with hostility.
Moreover, religious neutrality, though it is right, just, and the only
policy which the English in India could possibly adopt, has certain
political disadvantages. The two most potent influences which still
unite and divide the Asiatic peoples, are race and religion; a
Government which represents both these forces, as, for instance, in
Afghanistan, has deep roots in a country. A dynasty that can rely on
the support of an organised religion, and stands forth as the champion
of a dominant faith, has a powerful political power at its command.
The Turkish empire, weak, ill-governed, repeatedly threatened with
dismemberment, embarrassed internally by the conflict of races, has
been preserved for the last hundred years by its incorporation with
the faith of Islam, by the Sultan's claim to the Caliphate. To attack
it is to assault a religious citadel; it is the bulwark on the west of
Mohammedan Asia, as Afghanistan is the frontier fortress of Islam on
the east. A leading Turkish politician has very recently said: 'It is
in Islam pure and simple that lies the strength of Turkey as an
independent State; and if the Sultan's position as religious chief
were encroached upon by constitutional reforms, the whole Ottoman
empire would be in danger.' We have to remember that for ages
religious enthusiasm has been, and still is in some parts of Asia, one
of the strongest incentives to military ardour and fidelity to a
standard on the battlefield. Identity of creed has often proved more
effective, in war, than territorial patriotism; it has surmounted
racial and tribal antipathies; while religious antagonism is still in
many countries a standing impediment to political consolidation.
When, therefore, we survey the history of religions, though this
sketch is necessarily very imperfect and inadequate, we find
Mohammedanism still identified with the fortunes of Mohammedan rulers;
and we know that for many centuries the relations of Christianity to
European States have been very close. In Europe the ardent
perseverance and intellectual superiority of great theologians, of
ecclesiastical statesmen supported by autocratic rulers, have hardened
and beat out into form doctrines and liturgies that it was at one time
criminal to disregard or deny, dogmatic articles of faith that were
enforced by law. By these processes orthodoxy emerged compact, sharply
defined, irresistible, out of the strife and confusion of heresies;
the early record of the churches has pages spotted with tears and
stained with blood. But at the present time European States seem
inclined to dissolve their alliance with the churches, and to arrange
a kind of judicial separation between the altar and the throne, though
in very few cases has a divorce been made absolute. No State, in
civilised countries, now assists in the propagation of doctrine; and
ecclesiastical influence is of very little service to a Government.
The civil law, indeed, makes continual encroachments on the
ecclesiastical domain, questions its authority, and usurps its
jurisdiction. Modern erudition criticises the historical authenticity
of the scriptures, philosophy tries to undermine the foundations of
belief; the governments find small interest in propping up edifices
that are shaken by internal controversies. In Mohammedan Asia, on the
other hand, the connection between the orthodox faith and the States
is firmly maintained, for the solidarity is so close that disruptions
would be dangerous, and a Mohammedan rulership over a majority of
unbelievers would still be perilously unstable.
I have thus endeavoured to show that the historical relations of
Buddhism and Hinduism to the State have been in the past, and are
still in the present time, very different from the situation in the
West. There has always existed, I submit, one essential distinction of
principle. Religious propagation, forcible conversion, aided and
abetted by the executive power of the State, and by laws against
heresy or dissent, have been defended in the West by the doctors of
Islam, and formerly by Christian theologians, by the axiom that all
means are justifiable for extirpating false teachers who draw souls to
perdition. The right and duty of the civil magistrate to maintain
truth, in regard to which Bossuet declared all Christians to be
unanimous, and which is still affirmed in the Litany of our Church, is
a principle from which no Government, three centuries ago, dissented
in theory, though in practice it needed cautious handling. I do not
think that this principle ever found its way into Hinduism or
Buddhism; I doubt, that is to say, whether the civil government was at
any time called in to undertake or assist propagation of those
religions as part of its duty. Nor do I know that the States of
Eastern Asia, beyond the pale of Islam, claim or exercise the right of
insisting on conformance to particular doctrines, because they are
true. The erratic manifestations of the religious spirit throughout
Asia, constantly breaking out in various forms and figures, in
thaumaturgy, mystical inspiration, in orgies and secret societies,
have always disquieted these Asiatic States, yet, so far as I can
ascertain, the employment of force to repress them has always been
justified on administrative or political grounds, as distinguishable
from theological motives pure and simple. Sceptics and agnostics have
been often marked out for persecution in the West, but I do not think
that they have been molested in India, China, or Japan, where they
abound, because they seldom meddle with politics.[61] It may perhaps
be admitted, however, that a Government which undertakes to regulate
impartially all rites and worship among its subjects is at a
disadvantage by comparison with a Government that acts as the
representative of a great church or an exclusive faith. It bears the
sole undivided responsibility for measures of repression; it cannot
allege divine command or even the obligation of punishing impiety for
the public good.
To conclude. In Asiatic States the superintendence of religious
affairs is an integral attribute of the sovereignty, which no
Government, except the English in India, has yet ventured to
relinquish; and even in India this is not done without some risk, for
religion and politics are still intermingled throughout the world;
they act and react upon each other everywhere. They are still far from
being disentangled in our own country, where the theory that a
Government in its collective character must profess and even propagate
some religion has not been very long obsolete. It was maintained
seventy years ago by a great statesman who was already rising into
prominence, by Mr. Gladstone. The text of Mr. Gladstone's argument, in
his book on the relations of the State with the Church, was Hooker's
saying, that the religious duty of kings is the weightiest part of
their sovereignty; while Macaulay, in criticising this position,
insisted that the main, if not the only, duty of a Government, to
which all other objects must be subordinate, was the protection of
persons and property. These two eminent politicians were, in fact, the
champions of the ancient and the modern ideas of sovereignty; for the
theory that a State is bound to propagate the religion that it
professes was for many centuries the accepted theory of all Christian
rulerships, though I think it now survives only in Mohammedan
kingdoms.
As the influence of religion in the sphere of politics declines, the
State becomes naturally less concerned with the superintendence of
religion; and the tendency of constitutional Governments seems to be
towards abandoning it. The States that have completely dissolved
connection with ecclesiastical institutions are the two great
republics, the United States of America and France. We can discern at
this moment a movement towards constitutional reforms in Mohammedan
Asia, in Turkey, and Persia, and if they succeed it will be most
interesting to observe the effect which liberal reforms will produce
upon the relation of Mohammedan Governments with the dominant faith,
and on which side the religious teachers will be arrayed. It is
certain, at any rate, that for a long time to come religion will
continue to be a potent factor in Asiatic politics; and I may add that
the reconciliation of civil with religious liberty is one of the most
arduous of the many problems to be solved by the promoters of national
unity.