Yet before beginning to read this attempt to diagnose the state of the government of India and the paralysis that has come over it, I would ask the reader to remember this: This book is not a mere criticism of government and its methods, nor of the people and their defects. I have a remedy to propose for both. It is a remedy that I have thought over and worked at for years, and I believe it is the only remedy possible. But before disclosing it I wish the reader to understand the present state of things. If he retains the complacency which says that "all is for the best in the best of all possible governments, it is the people's fault entirely, visit it on them," then he will not realise that any remedy is wanting. Even if he do admit that something is wrong he will not know what it is, and cannot judge if that proposed be of any use. Therefore I ask him to bear with the diagnosis of the earlier chapters. He must get to know first what the constitution of the government of India is, what made its strength in the past, and why that strength has departed from it. Only after a true diagnosis can a true cure be suggested. Therefore I ask him to carefully follow the line of thought in the chapters which show in what way government now fails. He will then see what government should be and must be--and is not. Only then can he judge if the proposed remedies are likely to be successful, and perhaps he will be able to amend them or to better them. CHAPTER II THE PEOPLE Let us first take the people as a whole. I am aware in the first place that there are some who will object that the Indian peoples are not a whole. "There is no Indian people," they will say. "There are innumerable races, tribes, castes, diffused over a continent. They have nothing in common, neither language nor religion, nor habits nor ideals. You cannot talk of the people as a whole." Yet they have one thing in common; they have a common humanity. Religions, castes and races are but clothes. Beneath them lies humanity. And humanity is always the same in essence because it is one Soul striving towards one object, though in many different ways and in various stages of attainment. I will show this by one instance. It is said, for example, that the instinctive feeling of an Oriental towards women is different from that of Europe; the West respects women, and the East does not do so. This is proved to you by their habits, by polygamy, by polyandry, by, for instance, the habit of a man walking in front and the woman behind. These customs, you are told, disclose the Oriental attitude as different from ours and as differing in various parts of the East. They do not do so. The instinctive feeling of men to women is the same everywhere; it is an invariable emotion. Customs hide it, disguise it, and sometimes almost kill it; they never alter it.