Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
In spite of the traditional prestige attaching to the Crown, we cannot,
however, reasonably look for loyalty from India in the sense in which we
look for it from our own people or from our kinsmen beyond the seas.
There can never be between Englishmen and Indians the same community of
historical traditions, of racial affinity, of social institutions, of
customs and beliefs that exists between people of our own stock
throughout the British Empire. The absence of these sentimental bonds,
which cannot be artificially forged, makes it impossible that we should
ever concede to India the rights of self-government which we have
willingly conceded to the great British communities of our own race. And
there is another and scarcely less cogent reason. The justification of
our presence in India is that it gives peace and security to all the
various races and creeds which make up one-fifth of the population of
this globe. To introduce self-government into India would necessarily be
to hand it over to the ascendency of the strongest. That we are debarred
from doing by the very terms on which we hold India, and that is what
Lord Morley must have had in his mind, when, in supporting the Indian
Councils Act last year, he specifically excluded all possibility of such
assemblies ever leading to the establishment of Parliamentary government
in India. The sooner that is made perfectly clear the better. But just
because executive self-government is inconceivable in India so long as
British rule is maintained, we must recognize the special
responsibility that consequently devolves upon us not only to do many
things for India which we do not attempt to do for our self-governing
Dominions, but, above all, not to force upon India things which we
should not dream of forcing upon them, and especially in matters in
which British material interests may appear to be closely concerned. We
must continue to govern India as the greatest of the dependencies of the
British Crown, but we must do our utmost to satisfy Indians of all
classes and castes and beliefs that we govern them as none of their race
could govern them, with an equal and absolutely impartial regard for all
law-abiding communities, with an intelligent appreciation of their
peculiar interests, and with genuine consideration for all their ideas,
so long as those ideas are compatible with the maintenance and security
of British rule.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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