India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
The bureaucrats' want of confidence in any Indian leader reached its
limit in the attentions which the agents of the secret service bestowed
on such men as the late Mr. Gokhale. It is an open secret that the
secret service records have assigned a particular number to every public
leader in India. Religious preachers and teachers of the type of Lala
Hansraj and Lala Mûnshi Rám receive as much attention in the records as
the writer of this book or Mr. B. G. Tilak or Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal. The
"Servants of India" are as much the objects of solicitation on the part
of the secret service men as the members of the Arya Samaj. Of course,
agitators are agitators. All the great progressive souls of the world
have had to agitate at one time or another in their lives. Agitation is
the soul of democracy. There can be no progress in a democracy without
agitation. Sir Denzil Ibbetson could pay no greater compliment to the
Arya Samaj than by his remark in 1907 that, according to his
information, wherever there was an Arya Samaj it was a centre of unrest.
We hope the Governments are now convinced that the Arya Samaj has never
been revolutionary. It is one of the most conservative, restraining
forces in the social life of the country. Yet it cannot be denied that
its propaganda has been and will continue to be one of the most
disturbing factors in the placid waters of Indian life. The bureaucracy
could not look upon it with kindness. Any attempt to persist in this
kind of control or check or persecution will be fatal to the success of
the appeal which Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford have addressed to the
public men of India in the extract given above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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