Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
My enumeration may not be exhaustive but these are some of the
statements that are now being implanted as axioms in the minds of rising
generation of educated youths, the source from which we recruit the
great body of civil officials who administer India. If nothing more were
said, if the Press were content to--
"let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly" things would be bad
enough. But very much more is said. Every day the Press proclaims,
openly or by suggestion or allusion, that the only cure for the ills of
India is independence from foreign rule, independence to be won by
heroic deeds, self-sacrifice, martyrdom on the part of the young, in any
case by some form of violence. Hindu mythology, ancient and modern
history, and more especially the European literature of revolution, are
ransacked to furnish examples that justify revolt and proclaim its
inevitable success. The methods of guerilla warfare as practised in
Circassia, Spain, and South Africa; Mazzini's gospel of political
assassination; Kossuth's most violent doctrines; the doings of Russian
Nihilists; the murder of the Marquis Ito; the dialogue between Arjuna
and Krishna in the "Gita," a book that is to Hindus what the "Imitation
of Christ" is to emotional Christians--all these are pressed into the
service of inflaming impressionable minds. The last instance is perhaps
the worst. I can imagine no more wicked desecration than that the
sacrilegious hand of the Anarchist should be laid upon the Indian song
of songs, and that a masterpiece of transcendental philosophy and
religious ecstasy should be perverted to the base uses of preaching
political murder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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