Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
This is no invention of ours. Nor is it quite so wild as it
appears at first sight. I have gone into the matter carefully
and I can certainly conceive circumstances--50 or 100 years
hence--that would make India intolerable for our upper middle
classes; and once you get rid of the intelligent and wealthy
Moslems the masses could be reduced to absolute subjection
in the hands of Hindu rulers. Far be it from me to say that
all Hindus are of this purpose or that the school of "liberal
Nationalism" to which Gokhale belongs has ceased to exist.
But the other school predominates, and as our very existence
is at stake we Moslems do not want to take any risks or to see
even the very first steps taken towards transforming the
British into a Hindu _raj_. Yet those steps are now being taken,
though not quite so fast as we at one time feared and Hindus
expected. That the sad and terrible fate which our people
had in Spain may still be ours in India is a proposition that
sounds extravagant at first, but I for my part (and most
thoughtful Moslems agree with me) consider it quite possible,
and in a matter of such moment we must take possibilities
as well at probabilities into consideration.
The Imperial problem in India is not to get this or that law
changed, or so and so many troops increased, or such and such
measures of repression or concession adopted. It is to bring
about a new mental and spiritual attitude, and to replace
the narrow "Nationalism" of the present day by a broad
and truly liberal Imperialism in the practical sense of securing
general recognition for India's difficulties and divisions, and for
the natural and necessary maintenance of the British connexion
and of British rule. The statesman who can suggest
practical means for carrying out this intellectual conversion
will certainly have saved England and India much unhappiness
and disaster.
On the other hand, I am bound to say that there are also many Mahomedans
who, though professing similar apprehensions, show no disposition
towards fatalistic resignation. For they believe that, whatever may be
the fate of the British _raj_, the future must belong to the more virile
peoples of India, and certainly those who do not merely put their trust
in the fighting traditions of a conquering race may find a good deal of
encouragement for the faith within them from the vital statistics of
Hindus and Mahomedans respectively in India.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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