talking fraternity of India succeed in establishing the Swaraj. What does "the Real India," the India of these people, which may be presumed also to be the India of by far the vast majority of Muslims not yet sophisticated by superficial Western culture, want? It wants: (1) sound education, (2) sanitation, (3) social reforms, (4) the creation of a good moral atmosphere. The primary want of this Real India is education in the most comprehensive sense of the word. An education consisting in the development of all the faculties of the mind; an education which is calculated to make man's mind open, heart pure, intelligence clear-to make him to learn, to realize, and to face the truth. "Education does not consist, as Ruskin says, "in learning the tricks of numbers and the shapes of letters, and then turning your arithmetic to roguery, and your literature to lust." It is something nobler and better. The ancient India had a real education, though that education was the monopoly of the few. Ancient Greece had it, and some of the modern nations of Europe, if we must frankly admit the truth, have it, and we in India, under the fostering care of the British Government, only began to have it, but we cannot have it any longer. False sentimentalism, pseudo-patriotism, and dangerous prejudices are standing in the way of real culture. Owing to the existence of the factors mentioned above, we cannot study aright the history, literature, philosophy, and religion of our own country, as we cannot study the history, literature, and philosophy of others. We are too prejudiced in favour of our own things and against those of others to do that, and the result is a dangerous ignorance of the cultural, economical, political, and military conditions of our own country, of the empire to which we belong, and of the world at large-an ignorance which is deliberately fostered and which is at the root of all political agitation, disturbance, and tension prevailing in India. The duty of the British rulers is to see that this ignorance is removed and true knowledge is spread among the people, and this will do for India and the empire, what one hundred thousand Royal Commissions cannot be expected to do. In spite of a number of universities annually manufacturing thousands of graduates able to talk, demonstrate, and agitate in fluent English, the whole of India, which is reputed to be pre-eminently the land of philosophy, cannot show a single treatise on the subject worthy of serious attention, either in English or in any of the vernaculars; not a single book on politics which may be regarded as a standard work, although politics is precisely the subject which engages the attention of the whole cultured community in the country; and there is not a single book of criticism, although every day witnesses the publication of innumerable novels; and to our knowledge no single English, French, or German Classic has yet been translated into the vernacular, thus offering a sad contrast to Japan, which has translated practically all the books on all possible subjects available in European languages, both ancient and modern. It is wrongly supposed that India has enough of education because she has got enough of graduates and enough of universities and enough of journals creating the spirit of discontent in the country. It is the duty of the Government to take steps to encourage the spread of real culture in the country by all means in their power. It is their duty to bring the people in touch with real facts, instead of being displeased with the unmitigated rubbish uttered from the platform and published in the Press. Do either the British Government or the British public know that, somehow or other, 99 per cent. of the educated people in this country are under the comfortable delusion that their Mother Country is the inexhaustible source of gold and silver, although its annual produce of gold does not amount to more than two and a half crores of rupees in value, and it does not produce a single ounce of silver? Do they know that the English are thought guilty of robbing India of these treasures and of feeding her starved population with them? Do they know that the élite of India themselves believe, and they persuade others to believe in their turn, that the English are a race of intruders in India, which they have gained not as result of victory in a hundred battles on a hundred stricken fields, but as a result of intrigues and frauds? Do they know that this élite believe that they can threaten, bully, or terrify the nation which won the victories of Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Blenheim, and Waterloo, which has won the victories of Nile and Trafalgar, which has ousted France from India and America, which brought Phillip II, Louis XIV, and Napoleon to their knees, and which has recently crushed the mightiest military engine that the world has ever produced, into giving them independence? Do they know that the élite of India are ignorant of the fact that the military defence of their country, which they regard as too expensive, by only two hundred and odd thousand soldiers, a little more than one-fourth of whom are Britishers, is a miracle which has been made possible only by the prestige, the power, and the position of the British nation? When the people of India, I mean the vast body of the so-called educated people, realize that their country has to depend for more than 80 per cent. of her capital on foreign nations, without which no industrial operations are possible, that the foreign merchants whom they have learnt to regard as their exploiting enemies are really their economical protectors; that the numerically insignificant army against which they complain is not at all sufficient to protect India from a foreign invasion, which is retarded more by the prestige of the empire than by the presence of the Army; that the comparatively more homogeneous India under Chandra Gupta needed more than six lacs of soldiers for defence, and that Akbar required more than four and a half millions for the same purpose (if my memory is correct); that England does not depend on India alone for her vast commerce, which is unimaginably vaster than India's; that England has colonies, some of which are twice as large as India, for sending her surplus population in case of need; that, but for the presence of their hated rulers, their country would be reduced into a welter of ruin and anarchy, a facsimile of which they got in course of the Hindu-Muslim tension-they will talk more moderately, think more soberly, and act less loosely. If, however, no step towards real education is taken, and the state of dangerous ignorance be allowed to continue, the result will be what may be expected-the Real people of India will be duped by and fall a helpless prey to the agitators, to their own ruin. Hence it is that the education of the Real people should be the main concern of the British rulers. The second great need of the Real India is sanitation. It will be no exaggeration to say that practically the whole of the rural population of India, and they constitute more than three-fourths of the whole population of the country, are utterly ignorant of the elementary rules of hygiene: they take stale food and drink water 30 per cent. of which is mud, defiled with all manner of pollutions unmentionable in any decent publication like the present; and the people of India profess themselves to be intensely religious who are more sanctimonious than the Pharisees of old. No amount of legislation can prevent the people from committing nuisances in the tanks and reservoirs, no matter whether the legislation is in charge of the Government or of the popular representatives. A good deal has to be done in the direction of teaching the people to lead a healthy life, which is more important for the welfare of a nation than its form of government or system of education. The hygienical literature published both in English and vernacular should be brought within the easy reach of all, and examples which are better than precepts should be set. It is greatly to be regretted that the increasing death-rate of the population of India, which constitutes the theme of many a leader in the newspapers, should not be critically traced to its causes. An investigation of the problem on the part of the Government is really due to the people. Equally needful, if not more needful, is the problem of social reform, which can be better tackled by the people themselves than by the Government. In every country under the sun, except India, where this delicate task is to be performed, and can only be performed, by the Government, the intolerable tyranny known as caste system-which many ignorant people, both in England and India, explain away as a necessary institution comparable to the class system in the West, forgetting that in England and other countries of Europe every basket-maker is a possible lord and every lord is a possible basket-maker "; whereas in India a born Brahmin is a born Brahmin for ever-has to be abolished by the slow but the sure method of disseminating Western culture in harmony with all that is best in the Eastern. To the great credit of the British Government they have been doing it for one hundred years and a half, with results which, though not at all discouraging, are not commensurate with the efforts. When we think of Japan abolishing her caste system by a single determinate effort in a day, and compare this grand stroke of patriotism on the part of the privileged classes to the caste system of India, which, in spite of all talk of the removal of untouchability on the part of the people whose own touchability is not out of the question, is being all the more firmly rooted day by day, we cannot but give way to despair. To this must be added that compulsory seclusion of half of the population of the country, which means the economic sterility of that half. The progress that has hitherto attended the efforts to remove the seclusion of the gentler sex does not fill our heart with optimism, and the Government, which cannot carry out many of its good plans from the eternal lack of pence, should do well to devote more serious attention to these problems than they have hitherto done. If the whole population of the country, both male and female, devote themselves to productive work, and if the whole nation can set itself the task of self-improvement and self-education unfettered by artificial The last, but by no means the least, want of Real India is the creation of an atmosphere of morals--an atmosphere of trust, good will, and co-operation, an atmosphere where all the sections of the country, all the races and communities, Hindus and Moslems, Buddhists and Christians, meet freely and frankly, not for the purpose of talk and agitation, but for real work of construction, for co-operation. Such an atmosphere does not really exist in India, and it will take a good deal of time before it can come into existence: it can come into existence only when the rulers and the ruled meet in a co-operative mood, and the conflicting classes and communities learn of unity and compromise. The British Government can, and it should, see to the creation of such a moral atmosphere which will solve of itself half the problems with which India is beset to-day. These are the main wants of the Real people of India which, somehow or other, must be supplied by the Government if it is to prove worthy of its trust. If these wants are met, if the people be given good education and a good sanitation, if the conflicting factors of the nation are somehow reconciled, if an atmosphere of good morals is made to prevail, India will grow prosperous, vigorous, and great by leaps and bounds, and thereby will constitute an asset to the Empire of which she is a member. The Royal Commission, now paying its first visit to India, would do well to reckon among its first duties the task of making themselves acquainted with these real needs of the Real people of India, and, if possible, make some suggestions as to the way in which these vital needs of India, and for the matter of that of the Empire, may be met. They should not content themselves with merely preparing a report based on the proceedings of the legislative assemblies and the law courts. They must not be satisfied with evidences given in voluble English by the representatives of the Western educated few, mostly recruited from the social and political aristocracies of the country. They must not, and we hope they cannot, be deceived by far-fetched similes and metaphors and pointless analogies into recommending a grant of complete representative form of government, at the bidding of a few, to the many who are bound to look upon it in the light of a curse. The shrewd politicians who VOL. XCI 25 |