Therefore, because in this book I am speaking of the real humanity hid
beneath the clothes, the bonds, the chains of conventions and of
customs, of religions and belief, I can speak of the Indian peoples as
one people. Details differ enormously, but details do not ever affect
principles, only the method of their application. And creeds, faiths,
laws, and customs pass; humanity remains.
The Indian people, then, over whom we established our government
accepted it, and helped us to establish it. They wanted peace. For
two centuries or more they had been torn with wars, with insurrections,
with internal anarchy, and with their consequences. They wanted rest,
to plough, to sow, to reap, to trade in peace. We gave them that.
They wanted Courts Criminal and Civil that were not corrupt. We gave
them honest Judges. They wanted facilities for trade--roads, posts,
and such things--which we provided. They could expand and use some of
their energies.
But the field was a narrow one. Men are not born to sow and reap and
trade alone. They have other emotions which seek for outlet, other
energies which require a vent. Man is gregarious, and he is so made
that he cannot fully develop himself except in larger and again larger
communities. To reach his full stature in any way he must develop in
all ways. He must feel himself part of ever greater organisms, the
village first, the district and the nation--finally of humanity.
But in India all this is impossible. Except the village there is no
community that exists even in name, and we have injured, almost
destroyed, even that. Thus an Indian has no means of growth. He
cannot be a citizen of anything at all. Half his sympathies and
abilities lie entirely fallow, therefore he cannot fully develop the
other half. A man is a complete organism, and if you keep half in
inaction you affect the other half too. A man is not a worse but a
better merchant, or lawyer, or landowner, or soldier, because he is
interested in his locality, his community, his nation. It gives him
wider views, makes him more tolerant, more humane, more wise. Man as a
unit is a poor thing, physically, morally, and intellectually. Ability
is the product of communities, of men formed into organisms, not of
individuals. Each man in himself has no duty but to himself; to own a
duty to a community he must be part of the community; to a government
he must have a place in the government; to a nation he must be part of
the nation. But in India there is no nation, no community at all, save
very weakened village communities. As far as the Indian is concerned
no larger community exists. And I have already pointed out that India
has no place in the organism of government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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