“Why was this question of a financial contribution from India raised now? _For our own part we have the gravest doubt as to the wisdom or justice of taking any financial contribution from India._ We believe that this is not the best way for India and for the Empire, in which India can serve the common cause, and _that the loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of India is very much greater than the gain it represents to England_. If we really are seriously concerned that India ‘should develop in every way the vast potentialities of her indigenous products’ it would be better to spend 100 millions [£] on developing her resources than to take that money from India and in exchange give Bombay a tariff.” LAJPAT RAI. 18th March, 1917. INTRODUCTION I During my travels in the world, the one point that has struck me most forcibly and most painfully, is the lack of true knowledge about the affairs of India among the “civilised” nations of the globe. Even the best educated among them know very little about India and what little they know is not always right. The sources from which the ordinary stay-at-home Westerner derives his knowledge about India are the following: (a) missionaries who have been to India, (b) English writers of the class of Rudyard Kipling and Sir Valentine Chirol, (c) British officials, (d) serious students of Indian history or Indian literature like the late Professor Max Müller, the late Miss Noble, and the late Professor Goldstucker. Now unfortunately for India most of these people, except those coming under the last heading, have generally an axe to grind and can not be accepted as disinterested, well-informed, impartial authorities. Their reading of Indian history is often perverted and their observations of Indian life partial and distorted. They go to India with definite aims, look at persons and things from their own particular angle, and pose as authorities on matters far beyond the scope of their observations and studies. With rare exceptions most of the Westerners who go to India go with the presumption that the people of India belong to an inferior level of society; that they are heathens, worshippers of stocks and stones; that they are hopelessly divided into castes and classes; that these castes and classes are always at each other’s throats; that they have never had a settled or civilised form of government; that the British have for the first time in their history given them a settled government; and that India would go to pieces if British government were to withdraw.