Young India: An interpretation and a history of the nationalist movement from withinLajpat Rai, Lala
History
Young India: An interpretation and a history of the nationalist movement from within
Lajpat Rai, Lala
India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
“Much greater is the danger that we, with our Western ideals and customs
so different from those of India, should go to the other extreme and
take one of the two remaining points of view that I referred to above.
One of these is that which characterises a certain type (now happily
decreasing) of earnest but narrow-minded missionary.” The fourth source
of information, which, according to Professor Pratt, “one should regard
with distrust,” comprises “the superficial tourist or the non-missionary
European resident in India.” In his opinion this source is particularly
dangerous, for “it is so natural to suppose that one of our own race who
has travelled in India (and especially one who has lived there
‘twenty-two years’) will be in a position to know all about it.... The
tourist’s ignorance is not surprising, but it is not easy to understand
the ignorance of the average European resident in India.” Professor
Pratt’s remarks about the “average European resident,” who has been
“twenty-two years” in India, are prefaced by an eulogistic tribute to
the British administration of justice in India, which may be accepted
with a little salt. The administration of justice in India is impartial
and as fair as it can be under the circumstances, except when one party
is a native and the other a Britisher. What concerns us here, is
Professor Pratt’s opinion about the resident Englishman’s knowledge of
India. In his opinion “most of the Englishmen” whom he met seemed to him
“singularly lacking in curiosity or interest” about “Indian thought,
religion, traditions and ways of viewing things.” “The Anglo-Indian,”
adds he, “is surprisingly indifferent towards almost everything native.”
Professor Pratt illustrates his conclusions by actual facts which came
under his observation. One English gentleman who had lived in Calcutta
and other parts of the East for many years, said to the professor: “The
natives are all just a lot of animals, don’t you think so?” No wonder
that the professor had to say that his impression was quite different.
For him it was hard to conceive how one “could stay any time among them
without finding them a truly lovable people, and without imbibing
genuine respect and admiration for the simple dignity of their lives,
the quiet courtesy of their manners, their uncomplaining endurance of
hardships, their unbounded hospitality, and the feeling for spiritual
value, which in spite of gross superstitions is unmistakable in the
Indian atmosphere.” Professor Pratt’s “Englishman” had never heard of a
Dr. Bose, “one of the greatest botanists living,” and he did “not think
much” of Tagore’s poetry. “This lack of interest in native life as
such,” continues Mr. Pratt, “and the proud manifestation of conscious
superiority that goes with it, shows itself in the coarser natures _in a
contempt for the ‘black man’_ and ‘a constant swagger of putting him in
his place.’ As a result of this indifference to and _contempt for the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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