Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
Behind all the grievances of which I have spoken to-day
three questions of vital importance emerge to view. First,
what is the _status_ of us Indians in this Empire? Secondly,
what is the extent of the responsibility which lies on the
Imperial Government to ensure to us just and humane and,
gradually, even equal treatment in this Empire? And,
thirdly, how far are the self-governing members of this
Empire bound by its cardinal principles, or are they to share
in its privileges only and not to bear their share of the disadvantages?
These issues have been raised in their most acute form in South Africa,
but they exist also in Australia, and even in Canada, where many Indians
suffered heavily from the outburst of anti-Asiatic feeling which swept
along the Pacific Coast a couple of years ago. They involve the position
of Asiatic subjects of the Crown in all the self-governing Dominions and
indirectly in many of the Crown Colonies, for they affect the relations
of the white and coloured races throughout the Empire. Here, however, I
must confine myself to the Indian aspects. I have discussed them with a
good many Indians, and they are quite alive to the difficulties of the
situation. Though they resent the colour bar, they realize the strength
of the feeling there is in the Colonies in favour of preserving the
white race from intermixture with non-white races. It is, in fact, a
feeling they themselves in some ways share, for, in India the
unfortunate Eurasian meets with even less sympathy from Indians than
from Europeans. Indian susceptibilities may even find some consolation
in the fact that Colonial dislike of the Indian immigrant is to a great
extent due to his best qualities. "Indians," said Mr. Mudholkar,
appealing to Lord Minto, "are hated, as your Lordship's predecessor
pointed out, on account of their very virtues. It is because they are
sober, thrifty, industrious, more attentive to their business than the
white men that their presence in the Colonies is considered
intolerable." Educated Indians know how little hold the Mother Country
has over her Colonies in these matters. They know that both British and
Anglo-Indian statesmen have recognized their grievances without being
able to secure their redress, and it is interesting to note how warm
were the tributes paid in the Imperial Council to the energy with which
Lord Curzon had upheld their cause, by some of those who were most
bitterly opposed to him when he was in India. They know, on the other
hand, that though the British Labour Party can afford to profess great
sympathy for Indian political aspirations in India, it has never
tried--or, if it has tried, it has signally failed--to exercise the
slightest influence in favour of Indian claims to fair treatment with
its allies in the Colonies, where the Labour Party is always the most
uncompromising advocate of a policy of exclusion and oppression, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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