The Immediate Need
time of Lala Lajpatrai’s arrest, and protested that this arrest was the very way to drive Indians to despair. He used, at that time, in the very kindliest way, the argument of Seeley. Indians were defenceless and they must be protected even against themselves. The one thing needed was the Pax Britannica. Anything else could only end in the Pathans and Afridis and Afghans coming over the frontier. I remember the despair in which I went away after the conversation.
And, in very truth, though in many directions progress has been made since Sir John Seeley’s days, and even since the year 1907, yet in one direction no improvement whatever has taken place. National India is as defenceless as ever she was before. And, I am afraid, an impartial historian would have to relate that national deterioration has been going on apace, in spite of Indian awakening and in spite, of Indian progress in certain directions. I, for one, have come to believe that the state of the peasantry in India, under the
