These nationalist agitations arise primarily among the native upper classes and Western-educated elites, however successful they may be in inflaming the ignorant masses, who are often quite contented with the material benefits of enlightened European rule. This point is well brought out by a leading American missionary in India, with a lifetime of experience in that country, who wrote some years ago: "The common people of India are, now, on the whole, more contented with their government than they ever were before. It is the classes, rather, who reveal the real spirit of discontent.... If the common people were let alone by the agitators, there would not be a more loyal people on earth than the people of India. But the educated classes are certainly possessed of a new ambition, politically, and will no longer remain satisfied with inferior places of responsibility and lower posts of emolument.... These people have little or no sympathy with the kind of government which is gradually being extended to them. Ultimately they do not ask for representative institutions, which will give them a share in the government of their own land. What they really seek is absolute control. The Brahmin (only five per cent. of the community) believes that he has been divinely appointed to rule the country and would withhold the franchise from all others. The Sudra--the Bourgeois of India--would no more think of giving the ballot to the fifty million Pariahs of the land than he would give it to his dog. It is the British power that has introduced, and now maintains, the equality of rights and privileges for all the people of the land."[123] The apprehension that India, if liberated from British control, might be exploited by a tyrannical Brahmin oligarchy is shared not only by Western observers but also by multitudes of low-caste Hindus, known collectively as the "Depressed Classes". These people oppose the Indian nationalist agitation for fear of losing their present protection under the British "Raj." They believe that India still needs generations of education and social reform before it is fit for "home rule," much less independence, and they have organized into a powerful association the "Namasudra," which is loyalist and anti-nationalist in character.