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Thirty years ago, when I first visited India, the young Western-educated Hindu was apt to be, at least intellectually, plus royaliste que le roi. he plucked with both hands at the fruits of the tree of Western knowledge. Some were enthusiastic students of English literature, and especially of English poetry. They had their Wordsworth and their Browning Societies.
The loyalty displayed by the Indian princes and the great land-owning gentry and the old fighting races who had stood by the British for many generations was no surprise to Englishmen who knew India; but less expected was the immediate rally to the British cause of the new Western-educated classes who, baulked of the political liberties which they regarded as their due, had seemed to be drifting hopelessly into bitter antagonism to British rule a rally which at first included even those who, like Mr.
Unless these elements can be supplied, there is danger of suffering and of abuses worse than any the West has known." All this diffused social unrest was centring about two recently emerged elements: the Western-educated intelligentsia and the industrial proletariat of the factory towns.
Religion is, in fact, the basic element of Indian life, and morality apart from religion is an almost impossible conception for all but an infinitesimal fraction of Western-educated Indians. Hence, even if the attempt had been or were in the future made to instil ethical notions into the minds of the Indian youth independently of all religious teaching, it could only result in failure.
Not only were the new Government schools as well as the older missionary schools thronged with Indian students who displayed no less intelligence than industry in the acquisition of Western learning, but the rapid assimilation of Western ideas amongst the upper classes, especially in Bengal, was reflected in the social and religious reform movements initiated by Western-educated Indians touched with the spirit of the West.
Our object, therefore, both in the education and in the political training of Indians, should be to divert the activities of the new Western-educated classes into economic channels which would broaden their own horizon, and to give greater encouragement and recognition to the interests of the very large and influential classes that hold entirely aloof from politics but look to us for guidance and help in the development of the material resources of the country.
Western-educated Indians will not openly deny its evils the iron-bound principle of caste, which, in spite of many concessions in non-essentials to modern exigencies of convenience, remains almost untouched in all essentials and, above all, in the fundamental laws of inter-marriage, the social outlawry of scores of millions of the lower castes, labelled and treated as 'untouchable, infant-marriage, the prohibition of the re-marriage of widows, which, especially in the case of child-widows, condemns them to a lifetime of misery and semi-servitude, the appalling infantile mortality, largely due to the prevalence of barbarous superstitions, the economic waste resulting from lavish expenditure, often at the cost of lifelong indebtedness, upon marriages and funerals, and so forth and so forth.
That in the new province of Eastern Bengal, which was to be created by the Partition, the Mahomedans would constitute a large majority and enjoy advantages hitherto denied to them as a minority in the undivided province was an added grievance for the Hindus. Lord Curzon had not at first been unpopular with the Western-educated classes.
That the King can do no wrong is a saying that appealed to the Indian mind long before the Western-educated classes grasped its real meaning under a constitutional monarchy, and began to extend its application even to the King's Government for the purpose of conveniently discriminating between the British Government, whose good intentions were generally assumed, and the autocratic Government of India, whence all mischief sprang.
He does not in the least mind waiting for two, three, or four hours sometimes in more remote parts of the country for the best part of twelve or even of twenty-four hours. Only the Europeans and a few Western-educated Indians who have learnt business habits ever think of "catching" a train.
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