it home somewhat roughly to the Indians with whom he associated. The
ignorance of European and American globe-trotters who were finding their
way to India also often offended Indian susceptibilities. Add to many
causes of friction, almost inevitable sometimes between people whose
habits and ideas are widely different, the effect of a trying climate
upon the European temper--never, for instance, even at home at its best
when travelling--and one need hardly be surprised that unpleasant
incidents occurred in which, sometimes under provocation and sometimes
under none, Englishmen who ought to have known better were guilty of
gross affronts upon Indians. Such incidents were never frequent, but,
even if there had been no tendency on the part of Indians to magnify and
on the part of Englishmen to minimise their gravity, they were frequent
enough to cause widespread heartburning, and in not a few cases
political hatred has had its origin in the rancour created by personal
insults to which even educated Indians of good position have
occasionally been subjected by Englishmen who fancied themselves, but
were not, their betters. That Indians also could be, and were sometimes,
offensive they were generally apt to forget, as they forgot in their
denunciations of Lord Curzon at the time of the Partition of Bengal that
he had not shrunk from incurring great unpopularity in some Anglo-Indian
circles by insisting upon adequate punishment of all Europeans guilty of
violence towards Indians. Apart from such collisions nothing rankled
more with Indians of the better classes than their rigid exclusion from
the European clubs in India. Even the few who were members of, or had
been admitted at home as visitors to, the best London clubs were
debarred, when they landed in Bombay, even from calling on their English
friends at the Yacht Club. Europeans could see nothing in this but the
right of every club to restrict its membership and frame its regulations
as it chooses. Indians could see nothing in it but humiliating racial
discrimination. The question has now been more or less solved by the
creation in most of the large cities in India of new clubs to which
Indians and Europeans are equally eligible, and in which those who
choose can meet on terms of complete equality and good fellowship. But
it constituted one of the grievances which contributed to the
estrangement of the Western educated classes during the latter part of
the last century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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