_Arabinda Ghosh._ To this movement, Indian Nationalism owes the emerging into prominence of a quiet, unostentatious, young Hindu, who was till then comparatively obscure, holding his soul in patience and waiting for opportunities to send currents of the greatest strength into the nation’s system. He was gathering energy. His name was Arabinda Ghosh. Arabinda had received first class education in England. The headmaster of the school, where he studied before joining the university, is reported to have said that during the 25 to 30 years he had been in charge of the school, Arabinda Ghosh was by far the most richly endowed in intellectual capacity of any of the students that had come under his charge. At Cambridge he distinguished himself in European classics and took first class honours. He [Illustration: ARABINDA GHOSH] passed the Indian Civil Service examinations with credit, but failed in the test for horsemanship. Never did a failure prove more a blessing than in his case. He was in the service of His Highness, the Maharaja of Baroda,[73] drawing a salary of about 500 pounds sterling, when his country’s call came to him. He listened to it readily, gave up his post and agreed to be the principal of the National College on ten pounds a month. We are told by one who worked with him for some time that he did not support the “declaration of the National Council of Education” about their non-political attitude. He could not appreciate this needless dread, as they thought, of offending official susceptibilities. He, however, accepted the verdict of the majority and began his work. But his position as “the nominal head of the National College, controlled by men” who “differed from him in their political views and opinions, became almost from the very beginning anomalous.” This was rather unfortunate. Arabinda Ghosh had received the best modern education that any man of his country and generation could expect to have. He had for some years been a teacher of youth in Baroda and had acquired considerable experience in his art. He had clearly realised the spirit and actualities of the life of his nation, and knew how the most advanced principles of pedagogy could be successfully worked into a thoroughly national system of education in India. He knew that the foundations of national independence and national greatness must be laid in a strong and advanced system of national education. He had a political ideal, no doubt; but politics meant to him much more than is ordinarily understood by the term. It was not a game of expediency, but a “school of human character” which acted and reacted on the life of the nation. “Education could no more be divorced from politics,” in his opinion, “than it could be divorced from religion and morals. Any system of education that helps such isolation and division between the various organic relations of life is mediæval and not modern.”[74]