Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  Fuad then tried to change the whole constitution by just issuing a decree from his palace. His object was to make it still more conservative, so that future parliaments might be easier to control and most of the Zaghlulists might be kept out. But there was a tremendous outcry against this and it was clear that elections under the new system would be wholly boycotted. Thereupon King Fuad had to give way and elections were held under the old system. Result: vast majority for Zaghlul’s party— 200 to 14! There could not have been a greater proof of Zaghlul’s hold on the nation and of what Egypt wanted. In spite of this the British Commissioner (who was Lord Lloyd, an ex-Indian governor) said he objected to Zaghlul becoming Prime Minister and another person was, therefore, appointed. What business the English had to interfere in the matter it is a little difficult to understand. The new Government was, however, largely controlled by Zaghlul’s party and, in spite of all attempts at moderation, they often came into conflict with Lloyd, who was a most imperious and domineering individual, and who often threatened them with British warships.

  Another attempt was made in 1927 to come to an agreement with Britain, but even the very moderate Prime Minister of King Fuad was surprised at Britain’s conditions. Under cover of a paper independence they really meant a British protectorate. So the negotiations again failed.

  While these negotiations were going on, Egypt’s great leader, Saad Zaghlul Pasha, died, on August 23, 1927, at the age of seventy. He died, but his memory lives in Egypt as a bright and precious heritage, and inspires the people. His wife, Madame Safia Zaghlul, is still living, loved and revered by the entire nation, which has given her the title of the “mother of the people”. And his house in Cairo—the “People’s House” it is called—has long been the headquarters of the Egyptian nationalists.

  Mustafa Nahas Pasha succeeded Zaghlul as the leader of the Wafd. Later, in March 1928, he became Prime Minister. He tried to bring in some simple domestic reforms concerning civil liberties and the right of the people to possess arms. These rights had been curtailed by the British during the martial-law period. As soon as the Egyptian Parliament began considering this question, there came threats from England that this must not be done. It seems extraordinary that England should thus intervene in a purely domestic matter; but Lord Lloyd, in the approved old fashion, presented an ultimatum, and British warships steamed into Alexandria harbour from Malta. Nahas Pasha gave way to some extent, and agreed to postpone consideration of the measures to the next session, a few months later.

  But there was to be no next session. The King and the British Commissioner, reaction and imperialism, saw to it that the Parliament should be given no further chance to misbehave. The intrigue worked out in a novel way. Nahas Pasha was especially noted for his high character and his incorruptibility. Suddenly, on the basis of a letter (which later turned out to be forged), a charge of corruption was brought against Nahas Pasha and a Coptic leader of the Wafd. There was tremendous propaganda by palace circles and by the British. Not only in Egypt, but in foreign countries, British agencies and newspaper correspondents spread these false accusations. Under cover of this charge King Fuad asked Nahas Pasha to resign from the premiership. He refused to do so, and thereupon he was dismissed by Fuad. The next step in the Lloyd-Fuad intrigue was now taken. There was a coup d’état, and by a decree the King suspended Parliament and altered the constitution. The articles in the constitution dealing with the freedom of the Press and other liberties were abolished and a dictatorship was proclaimed. There were rejoicings in the English Press and among the Europeans in Egypt.

  The members of Parliament met together, in spite of the dictatorship, and declared the new Government illegal, but neither Lloyd nor Fuad was worried about such matters. The function of “law and order” is to support reaction and imperialism, not to be used as a weapon against them.

  The case brought by the Government against Nahas Pasha collapsed in spite of Government pressure. The charges against him were held to be false. And the Government (how amazingly fair and chivalrous it was!) issued orders forbidding the publication of the judgment in the Press. But of course the news spread immediately, and everywhere there was great joy.

  The dictatorship, backed by Lloyd and the British forces, tried hard to crush and break up the Wafd party, which meant Egyptian nationalism. There was a regular terror and a complete censorship of news. In spite of this, great national demonstrations took place in which the women took a special part. There was a week’s strike, the lawyers and others taking part in it, but owing to the censorship, the Press could not even report this.

  So the year 1928 passed in storm and stress. Towards the end of the year a change in the political situation in England had its immediate reaction in Egypt. A Labour Government had come into office there, and one of the first steps it took was to recall Lloyd, who had become insufferable, even to the British Government. Lloyd’s removal broke up for a while the Fuad-English alliance. Without English support Fuad could not carry on, and so he allowed fresh elections to Parliament in December 1928. Again the Wafd party captured nearly all the seats.

  The English Labour Government started negotiations again with Egypt, and Nahas Pasha went to London in 1929 for this purpose. The Labour Government went a little farther this time than its predecessors, and Nahas Pasha’s viewpoint on three of the reservations was accepted. But on the fourth—the Sudan—again there was no agreement, and so the negotiations broke down. On this occasion, however, there had been far greater agreement than before; and the parties remained friendly to each other, and promised to have discussions again. This was on the whole a success for Nahas Pasha and the Wafd, and the British and other foreign businessmen and financiers in Egypt did not fancy it at all. Neither did King Fuad. A few months later, in June 1930, there was a conflict between the King and Parliament, and Nahas Pasha resigned from the premiership.

  Fuad again stepped into the breach with a dictatorship—the third dictatorship of his reign. Parliament was dissolved, the Wafd newspapers were suspended and generally the dictatorship began to function with a heavy hand. All the members of Parliament, of both Houses, the Chamber and the Senate, defied the Palace Government, and forcing their way into the Parliament House, held a session there. Solemnly they took the oath, on June 23, 1930, of loyalty to the constitution, and they swore that they would defend it with all their strength. Great demonstrations were held all over the country. These were forcibly broken up by the troops, and a good deal of blood was shed. Nahas Pasha himself was injured. In this way the troops and police under British officers upheld a dictatorship which was bitterly resented by the whole nation excepting a handful of aristocrats and rich men who clung to the King. Even others besides the Wafdists, even the moderates and liberals, who, as in India, proclaimed their opposition to all strong action on behalf of the people, even they protested against the dictatorship.

  Later in the same year, 1930, the King published a decree proclaiming a new constitution, in which he cut down the powers of Parliament and increased his own! It was so easy to do this kind of thing. Issue a proclamation and it was done, for behind the King was the grim shadow of an imperialist Power.

  I have told you the story of these nine years in Egypt, from 1922 to 1930, in some detail, because it has seemed to me to be an extraordinary story. These were the years of Egypt’s “independence”, according to the British declaration of February 1922. There could be no question of what the Egyptian people wanted. Whenever they were given the chance, the vast majority of them, Muslims and Copts, elected the Wafdists. But because what they wanted was to lessen the power of foreigners, and especially of the British, to exploit the country, all these foreign vested interests opposed them in every way—by force and violence, by fraud and intrigue—and put up a puppet king to do their bidding.

  The Wafd movement has been a purely nationalist bourgeois movement. It has fought for national independence, and has not interfered with social problems. Whenever Parliament has functioned,
it has done some good work in educational and other departments. Indeed, in spite of the national struggle, Parliament did more in this brief period than the English administration had done in the previous forty years. The Wafd’s popularity with the peasantry has been shown by the elections and by the great demonstrations. And yet, as the movement is essentially a middle-class one, it has not aroused the masses to the extent that a movement aiming at social change would do.

  Before I end this letter I must tell you of the women’s movement. All over the Arab countries, except probably in Arabia itself, there has been a great awakening of women. Egypt is in this, as in many other matters, more advanced than Iraq or Syria or Palestine. But in all these countries there is an organized women’s movement, and in July 1930 the first Arab Women’s Congress met at Damascus. They laid stress more on cultural and social progress than on political matters. In Egypt women are more politically inclined. They take part in political demonstrations, and have a strong Women Suffrage Union. They claim a reform of the marriage law in their own favour, and equal opportunities for women in professions, etc. Muslim and Christian women co-operate with each other fully. The habit of veiling the face is lessening everywhere, more especially in Egypt. The veil has not disappeared, as in Turkey, but it is going to pieces.

  Note (October 1938):

  From 1930 onwards Egypt was under a dictatorial government controlled from the Palace. In theory it was a “sovereign independent State”, but in reality it was almost a colony of Great Britain, with foreign garrisons in Cairo and Alexandria and Britain controlling the Suez Canal and the Sudan. These were the years of the great economic slump all over the world, and Egypt suffered greatly owing to the fall in cotton prices.

  In 1935 Fascist Italy invaded Abyssinia, and this new danger to Egypt, as well as to British interests in the upper Nile valley, brought about a change in the relations between Egypt and England. England could not now afford to have a rebellious and unfriendly Egypt, and Egyptian leaders began to look at England as a possible friend. The Wafd Party triumphed during the elections for the Parliament, and Nahas Pasha became Prime Minister. In the new atmosphere that was created as a result of Italian aggression in Abyssinia, Egypt and England came to terms, and a treaty was signed in August 1936. Egypt, for the sake of peace, agreed to give up much that she had insisted on previously, and accepted the status quo in the Sudan and England’s right to defend the Suez Canal. Further, Egypt’s foreign policy was to be linked up to that of England. England, on the other hand, withdrew her troops from Cairo and Alexandria, promised to help in abolishing the Mixed Courts and extra-territoriality, and to support Egypt’s admission to the League of Nations.

  There were great rejoicings at this settlement, but they were somewhat premature. The Palace, in spite of a change of kings, continued to hate the Wafd and to intrigue against it. British imperialism still continued to function behind the scenes. A very large part of the land of Egypt is owned by a handful of persons, and the royal family itself owns a tremendous share. These landed magnates are strongly opposed to progressive legislation and to the growth of the people’s power. Thus there was continuous friction, and the King dismissed Nahas Pasha and dissolved Parliament.

  New elections were held after an interval of Palace government, and, to everyone’s surprise, the Wafd sustained a heavy defeat. Subsequently it appeared that this election was largely a bogus affair and false returns had been engineered. The Wafd Party, under Nahas Pasha’s leadership, continues to be very popular, but the Government of today is run by the Palace clique with the support of British imperialism.

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  Western Asia Re-enters World Politics

  May 25, 1933

  Only a tiny strip of blue separates Egypt and Africa from western Asia. Let us cross this Suez Canal and visit Arabia and Palestine and Syria and Iraq—all Arab countries—and, a little beyond them, Persia. Western Asia, as we have seen, has played a mighty part in history, and has often been the pivot of world affairs. And then there came a period, lasting several hundred years, when politically it retired into the background. It became a backwater, and the current of life rushed by, hardly creating a ripple on its still surface. And now we are witnesses of yet another change which is bringing the countries of the Middle East again into world affairs; again the highway between East and West passes through them. This is a fact which deserves our attention.

  Whenever I think of western Asia I am apt to lose myself in the past; so many images of the old days crowd into my mind, and I find it difficult to resist their fascination. I shall try not to give in to this attraction, but I must remind you again—lest you forget! —of the importance, for many thousands of years from the very beginning of history, of this part of the earth’s surface. Old Chaldea dimly appears in history 7000 years ago. (This corresponds to modern Iraq.) And then comes Babylon, and after the Babylonians appear the cruel Assyrians, with their great capital at Nineveh. The Assyrians are in their turn pushed away, and a new dynasty and a new people, coming from Persia, impose their will on the whole of the Middle East from the Indian frontier to Egypt. These were the Achaemenids of Persia, with their capital at Persepolis. They produced the “Great Kings” Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes, who threatened little Greece, but failed to overcome her. They met their fate later at the hands of a son of Greece, or rather of Macedonia, Alexander. A curious incident took place in Alexander’s career when, in this meeting-place of Asia and Europe, he planned what has been called a “marriage” of the two continents. He himself (although he had a few wives already) married the daughter of the Persian King, and thousands of Alexander’s officers and soldiers also married Persian girls.

  After Alexander, Greek culture prevailed in the Middle East from the Indian frontier to Egypt for many centuries. The power of Rome arose during this period, and it spread towards Asia. It found a check in a new Persian Empire—that of the Sassanids. The Roman Empire itself split up into two, the Western and the Eastern, and Constantinople came to be the seat of the latter. The old struggle between East and West continued on these plains of western Asia, and the chief combatants were the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople and the Persian Sassanid Empire. And all this time great caravans of people, carrying merchandise on the backs of camels, crossed these plains from east to west and west to east, for the Middle East was then one of the world’s great highways.

  Three great religions had seen the light of day in these lands of western Asia—Judaism (that is the religion of the Jews), Zoroastrianism (the religion of the modern Parsees), and Christianity. A fourth now appeared in the deserts of Arabia, and soon it dominated the other three in this part of the world. Then there came the Arab Empire of Baghdad and a new form of the old struggle—Arabs against Byzantines. After a long and brilliant career, Arab civilization wanes before the coming of the Seljuk Turks, and is finally crushed by the successors of Chengiz Khan, the Mongol.

  But before the Mongols came west a fierce struggle had already commenced on the western coasts of Asia between the Christian West and the Muslim East. These were the Crusades, which lasted, off and on, for 250 years, almost to the middle of the thirteenth century. These Crusades are looked upon as wars of religion, and so they were. But religion was more of an excuse for the wars than a cause. The people of Europe in those days were backward as compared to the East. Those were the Dark Ages of Europe. But Europe was waking up, and the more advanced and cultured East drew it like a magnet. This pull towards the East took many shapes, and among these the Crusades were the most important. As a result of these wars Europe learnt much from the western Asiatic countries. She learnt many fine arts and crafts and habits of luxury, and, what was more important, methods of scientific work and thought.

  The Crusades were hardly over when the Mongols swept down on western Asia, bringing destruction in their train. And yet we must not think of the Mongols just as destroyers. Their vast movements from China to Russia brought together distant peoples and encouraged trade and
intercourse. Under their huge empire the old caravan routes became safe to travel by, and not only merchants but diplomatists, religious missionaries and others went up and down them on their tremendous journeys. The Middle East was in the direct line of these ancient world highways: it was the link between Asia and Europe.

  It was in the days of the Mongols, you will perhaps remember, that Marco Polo went from his native Venice all the way across Asia to China. We happen to possess a book written, or rather dictated, by him giving an account of his travels, and that is why we remember him. But many other people must have undertaken these long journeys without taking the trouble to write about them and, even if they did write, their books may have perished, for those were the days of manuscript books. Caravans were continually passing from country to country, and though the main business was trade, many a man accompanied them in search of fortune and adventure. One great traveller of the old days stands out like Marco Polo. This was Ibn Battuta, an Arab born early in the fourteenth century in Tangiers in Morocco. He thus came just a generation after Marco Polo. As a young man of twenty-one he marched out on his tremendous journey into the wide world, carrying little with him except his wits and the education of a Muslim Qazi or religious judge. From Morocco, right across North Africa, he travelled to Egypt, and then to Arabia and Syria and Persia; then he went to Anatolia (Turkey), and South Russia (under the Mongol Khans of the Golden Horde), and Constantinople (still the capital of Byzantium), and Central Asia, and India. He crossed India from north to south, went on to Malabar and Ceylon, and then to China. On his return he wandered about Africa and even crossed the Sahara desert! This is a record of travel which is rare enough today with our many conveniences. It is an amazing eye-opener for the first half of the fourteenth century, and it shows us how common travelling was in those days. In any event, Ibn Battuta must be numbered amongst the great travellers of all time.