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It is not surprising then that all over India the influence of Christ and of Christianity is lessened from the identification of Christianity with the British. For a native of India to accept the British religion is to run counter to the prevailing anti-British and pro-Indian feeling; it is unpatriotic to become a convert to Christianity.
For in the sphere of politics, the new national feeling confessedly looks to Britain for ideals. Apologies for India's social customs and for her religious ideas and ideals are not wanting in India at the present time, for in matters social and religious, as we shall see, the political reformers are often ardently conservative, or pro-Indian at least.
It was at one of these Sivaji celebrations in 1897 that Mr. Tilak abandoned himself to the pro-Indian and anti-British feeling, glorifying Sivaji's use of the knife upon foreigners. "Great men are above common principles of law," ... he said.
To speak of laymen only, there are no Anglo-Indians more trusted than those who make no secret of their desire for the advancement of India's welfare through a religious reformation, who hold that this purely pro-Indian national feeling is as yet imperfect because divorced from the idea of the unity of mankind and the concomitant idea of the progress of the whole race.
The Congress claimed to represent the educated opinion of India, and, though Government withheld from it all official recognition, it flattered itself not without reason that its preaching had not fallen on to altogether barren soil when, still under Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty, the Indian Local Government Act of 1888 marked a large advance upon the reforms in local and municipal institutions which, with the repeal of the Lytton Press Act, had been amongst the few tangible results of Lord Ripon's "Pro-Indian" Viceroyalty; for it fulfilled many of the demands which Indian Liberals, and notably Pherozeshah Mehta, had urged for years past for a more effective share in municipal administration.
From the pro-Indian feeling to the anti-British Boycott feeling is only one step along the road that new-educated India is treading. The boycott of British goods in 1905 has been the next step. The provocation alleged by the politicians who organised the boycott was the division of the province of Bengal. The plea of encouragement of native industries we may set aside as an afterthought.
Their very name, the Prayer Associations, implies the dual conception of God and Man, for the pantheistic conception does not admit of the idea of prayer any more than it admits of the other dualistic conceptions of revelation, of worship, and of sin. It is above all pro-Indian and pro-Vedic.
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