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
_Political Disqualification of the Indians._ For the first time in the
political history of India it has become a political disqualification to
be an Indian. The offspring of an Englishman, domiciled in India and
married to an Indian lady, loses in rank and status by that fact; nor
does the issue of an Indian gentleman from an Englishwoman gain anything
thereby. So the inferiority in both ways lies in Indian blood and Indian
origin. The Muslim who married in India, or the Indian who married a
Persian or Afghan, were not affected thereby in their political
privileges in the Mohammedan régime. An Indian convert to Christianity
is in no better position in India than a Hindu or a Muslim. Thus it is
not a religious inferiority or a religious distinction, upon which the
political disabilities of an Indian are based, but the fact of his being
an Indian by blood and by birth. Never before was India governed by a
handful of officers, military and civil, who came to rule for a period,
going away when that period was over, only to be replaced by another set
equally temporary. India thus loses all or most of what these receive in
the shape of money; she loses all the experience which they gain in the
different spheres of activity that engages them during the period of
their service in India; last but not least, she is deprived of the
satisfaction and pride of claiming these men as her sons, who would in
their turn take pride in her and feel as sons should for their mother.
They come as her rulers, and till the end remain the same. Their sons
and grandsons also may in their turn come as rulers, but never as sons.
The sons of India, who gain the rank of officials, are only servants of
the British. Their position in the Indian services is generally that of
drawers of water and hewers of wood for their British masters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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