We must admit that during the personal government of the former days
there have been instances of tyranny, injustice and extortion. They
caused sufferings and unrest from which we are glad to be rescued. The
protection of law is not only a boon, but it is a valuable lesson to us.
It is teaching us the discipline which is necessary for the stability of
civilization and for continuity of progress. We are realizing through it
that there is a universal standard of justice to which all men,
irrespective of their caste and colour, have their equal claim.
This reign of law in our present Government in India has established
order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races
and customs. It has made it possible for these peoples to come in closer
touch with one another and cultivate a communion of aspiration.
But this desire for a common bond of comradeship among the different
races of India has been the work of the spirit of the West, not that of
the Nation of the West. Wherever in Asia the people have received the
true lesson of the West it is in spite of the Western Nation. Only
because Japan had been able to resist the dominance of this Western
Nation could she acquire the benefit of the Western Civilization in
fullest measure. Though China has been poisoned at the very spring of
her moral and physical life by this Nation, her struggle to receive the
best lessons of the West may yet be successful if not hindered by the
Nation. It was only the other day that Persia woke up from her age-long
sleep at the call of the West to be instantly trampled into stillness by
the Nation. The same phenomenon prevails in this country also, where the
people are hospitable, but the Nation has proved itself to be
otherwise, making an Eastern guest feel humiliated to stand before you
as a member of the humanity of his own motherland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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