Art. III.-THE ROYAL VISIT.

A LAND-MARK IN RECENT INDIAN

HISTORY.

THE Royal Visit and the Delhi Durbar of December 1911, will both be remembered in history for a long time to come as things altogether unique alike in their present significance and future import. The Sovereign of England had never before come to this country as its actual ruler; so from the time when it was announced, more than a year ago, that His Majesty was to visit India a little after his Coronation at Westminster and announce in his august person to his Indian subjects the fact of his having formally assumed the rule over the vast empire under the sway of his house in succession to his father and grandmother of revered memory, people out here were impatiently waiting for the joyful event that was to come off at the end of the year. They were at last to see their Emperor in flesh and blood and, what was more, that Emperor was going to hold his imperial court at Delhi, the historic capital of the former emperors, and receive in person the dutiful homage of his chiefs and subjects. This was enough to fire the imagination of even a sluggish and dull race. But the Indians, though otherwise a rather unimaginative people, are very susceptible of sentiment with regard to their personal rulers, and are always very quick to respond when the right chord is touched in their hearts.

Whoever advised His Majesty to come out here as crowned ruler of India, showed himself a true statesman, a perfect master of statecraft in recognising

the real Indian character and what a part sentiment plays in swaying it. The general impression among the people is that King George needed no advice in this matter, and that the idea emanated spontaneously from himself and his royal consort, for during their previous tour in this country as Prince and Princess of Wales, they had travelled with their eyes wide open in every direction and gained a real insight into the character and sentiments of their future subjects which must have indicated unmistakeably to them the immense value of such a visit. King Edward VII. had also with his quick insight seen this value; but the advanced age at which he came to the throne, and still more the weak health in which he then was, stood in the way of his undertaking such a momentous journey. His illustrious son was more fortunate in this matter, as he ascended the throne in the prime of manhood in full health and vigour.

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The Indian people were also highly pleased with the steadfastness with which His Majesty clung to the idea when once it was taken. There were many circumstances to shake him in his resolution. siderations arising from the political condition of the country, unrest, sedition and the like, for abandoning his visit, he had resolutely withstood from the commencement. There were many people here, especially among the Anglo-Indian and official classes, who shook their heads ominously at the idea of His Majesty coming out at such a juncture. But these good folks, however experienced they may be of Indian affairs, showed by their nervousness their ignorance of the real Indian character and of the well springs hidden deep down the Indian heart that move it. His Majesty when he unalterably resolved to trust

his august person and that of his beloved consort to his Indian subjects, knew far better than these nervous folks, who were far too much under the influence of the bogey of anarchism, sedition, and the rest. Not that His Majesty made light of these political dangers lurking in the country. But he showed his true insight, inherited from his father and strengthened by his experience of the people during his previous tour, when he refused resolutely to believe that these dangers arising from political unrest touched him personally

The King is above all politics is no less a maxim with the Indian than with the English people, though the former are unconscious of it as a maxim of the constitution. With the English it has been the outcome of the slow growth of generations of strife and discord between the Crown and the people With the Indians it is not so much a maxim as an instinct. Loyalty, personal unswerving devotion to the throne, is a deep instinct of the people embedded in their very nature. Politics have very little to do with it. They have been loyal and faithful to some of their worst rulers in past history. A mad and savage tyrant like Mahomed Tughlakh, who played several cruel pranks with his people, debased their currency, led them to certain destruction on a hopeless expedition against China, through the snowy defiles of the Himalayas where they perished miserably, who amused himself by hunting down with his army his innocent subjects like wild beasts, ruled over them for nearly a full generation and was allowed to die peacefully in bed. Even so shrewd a judge of the Indian character as Sleeman calls this strange But it is really not strange to those who know how deep down in their nature is firmly embedded the loyalty of the Indians

unsophisticated by Western ideas and ideals, to their Sovereigns.

The King can do no wrong is again a maxim of slow and painful growth in the English Constitution. With the Indians it is not a growth at all, but an instinct handed down from their remotest ancestors. With them a divinity doth hedge in a king in all earnestness. Nearly all the gods that the Hindus worship at the present day once ruled over them as their kings. The reverence felt for their kings is very nearly akin to worship of their gods. There is a superstitious awe in their minds which forbids them even to think ill of their King. Even when the King does anything that does not commend itself to them, they only blame themselves, their own sad lot The King's behests are accepted much as the decrees of fate, unalterable, inexorable, irresistible. This excessive and superstitious regard is hereditary in them from the earliest ages. New-fangled Western ideas have tended somewhat of late to disturb this simple honest notion of kingship, just as they have tended to shake their primitive conception of godship in kingship. But, thank Heaven, the vast mass of the population are as yet untainted by these exotic ideas imported from the West which are confined to a very narrow circle indeed.

The British Sovereign is the embodiment of the British Rule in India, and that Rule, the people here know very well, has done immense good to their country in various ways. The person of the British Sovereign then is sacrosanct to the Indian people in even a greater degree than the persons of their former sovereigns of other dynasties, who embodied less beneficent and sometimes positively harmful rules over them. Aurangzeb was disliked by all his numerous Hindu subjects and probably also by many others; yet history does

not record a single attempt on his life emanating from these subjects during his long reign of wellnigh half a century. This almost blind devotion to their sovereign, whatever he be and whoever he be, is characteristic of the Indians, and is an asset whose full value some people have failed to realise. But King George has showed his true insight by recognising this deep loyal instinct of the Indians, and also his true statesmanship by taking this opportunity of coming here soon after his Coronation, and turning it to still further account in knitting his Indian subjects still closer to his throne and to the British Rule.

He knew that there was a certain amount of discontent among them primarily arising from natural causes like famine and plague recurring for a series of years, and also from some mistakes of the administrators chiefly arising out of the inability of the latter to enter into the minds of the people and to view measures from their point of view. The manner in which the King has adroitly utilised his visit in allaying this discontent and in setting the people right with their administrators in certain matters, marks him out as a Sovereign of consummate ability at the very threshold of his reign, and one from whose ripe statesmanship even greater good may confidently be expected to the empire at large in coming years.

The Indian people knew that their good name for loyalty had suffered somewhat in the eyes of some, both here and in England, owing to the misconduct of a few insane anarchists, and throughout the year they were fearful that the Royal visit might be put off or abandoned altogether. When the rains held back for several weeks during the latter part of the monsoon, fair grounds seemed to arise that their fears would prove true. But