grants, or even if the land was kingless, these primary activities of the community would not suffer any serious check. Not that the king did not provide water-reservoirs for the people, but no more than what all wealthy men considered it their duty to do. The neglect of the king could not dry up the water resources of the country.
In England every one is at liberty to pursue his self-interest, his personal comforts and amusements. They are not burdened with communal duties. All the greater cares rest on the state. In our country it was the king who was comparatively free, and on the people was cast the burden of their civic obligations. The king warred and hunted, whether he spent his time attending to matters of state or to his personal pleasures was a matter for which he might be accountable to dharma, but on which the people did not leave their communal welfare to depend. The responsibility for this was divided in a wonderfully adaptive way among the members of the community themselves.
For this reason what we understand as dharma permeated the whole social fabric, each one had to practise the discipline of self-restraint, each one had to conform to dharma.
This shows that the seat of life of different civilisations is differently placed in the body politic. Where the responsibility for the welfare of the people lies, there beats the heart of the nation, and if a blow should fall thereon, the whole nation is wounded unto death. In England the overthrow of the state would mean destruction for the nation. But disaster can only overtake our country when its social body, its Samaj, is crippled. That is why we have never staked our all to resist a change of sovereignty, but have clung with might and main to the freedom of our Samaj. It is, I say, because all good works depend in England upon the state, and in India upon the social organisation, that in England to save the state is to save the country, and for India to live is to preserve her social institutions.
Naturally England is busy keeping the state ever alert, eternally vigilant. And we having read in her school, have come to the conclusion that the continual poking of Government out of its indifference is the whole duty of the Indian man. We somehow seem to have become incapable of understanding that putting a blister on someone else’s body is not a way to cure one’s own malady.
We love to argue, and here it may be argued whether or not it is better to centralise the business of public welfare in the hands of a specialised Government rather than leave it loosely spread over every member of the community. What I say is, that this may be a good subject for a debating club, but its discussion cannot lead us anywhere, for in England the state depends on the continued goodwill of the people, which has been evolved by a natural process. We cannot get to this state by discussion and, though it be perfection itself, we must perforce do without it!
The Government in our country—the Sarkar— has no relations with our social organisation—the Samaj, so that whatever we may seek from the former must be paid for out of our freedom. From whichever of its duties our Samaj seeks relief by getting it done by the Sarkar, to that extent will it be disabled with an incapability which was not of its essence in the past. To-day we are striving, of our own accord, to place in the hands of the Sarkar the whole duty of our Samaj. So long many a new sect has arisen in our Samaj, each with its own special manners and customs, without protest or penalty from the larger body. Now we are crystallised into rigidity by the Englishman’s law, and every departure is compelled to declare itself non-Hindu. The innermost core of our Samaj, which we have been carefully guarding within our bosoms, through the ages, is at last exposed to outside aggression. That is the calamity,—not water-scarcity.
In the old days those who were decorated by the Imperial power of the Moghuls, and called to share its counsels, did not find their fullest satisfaction in these honours. They gave a higher place to the approval of their own Samaj. And for the highest reward, which even Delhi had
