attention and skill are absorbed in steering through the rocks of the European waters and in keeping together his colonies. We who inhabit a fringe of his unwieldy empire,—our likes and dislikes, our effusions and tantrums, alike leave him cold. Hence the soporific power of Indian debates in Parliament.
The Englishman passes through this country like flowing water, he carries no memory of value away with him, his heart strikes no root in its soil. He works with the prospect of furlough in his mind, and even for his amusements he looks to his compatriots alone. His acquaintance with our language is confined to the depositions of witnesses and with our literature to translations in the Government Gazette. How little of his view we subtend we are apt to forget and so are every now and then taken by surprise at his callousness towards us. When we blurt out our feelings, he in turn, naturally considers such expression an exaggeration, which sometimes provokes irritation and sometimes only a smile.
I am not saying all this by way of formulating a charge against the Englishman, but merely to point to the facts as they are, and naturally must be. How can the high and mighty have a vision keen enough to discern in detail the agonies, however heart-rending, the losses however vital, of what is so very small? So what seems to us of immense moment is negligible to his perceptions. When we rage and fume over the partition of this little province of ours, or of some problem concerning this petty municipality of ours, or this education or literature of ours, we are astounded at not getting results proportionate to our outcry. We forget that the Englishman is not of us, but over us, and if ever we should reach the olympian heights where he dwells, only then could we know at what a distance we are and how ridiculously diminutive we look.
It is because we appeared so small to him that Lord Curzon asked with naive surprise why we were so absurdly unable to appreciate the glory of being merged in the British Empire. Just think of it! To be compared with Australia, Canada, and the rest, for whose imperial embrace the Britisher is pining, at whose window he sings such moving serenades, for whose sake he is even willing to allow the price of his daily bread to mount up! Could his lordship have been serious? But whatever Lord Curzon may have felt when making this extravagant suggestion, our feelings were much the same as those of the lamb ceremonially invited, along with the guests, to join the feast! So are we called to glory within the British Empire. There, if tropical areas are to be brought under cultivation, it shall be our function to furnish cheap indentured labour, it shall be our right to supply funds for expeditions against poor, inoffensive Tibet, and if there be a rising of the oppressed in Somaliland, it shall be our privilege to die in its suppression. Only thus can both big and small participate in a common glory.
But, as I say, that is a natural law over which it is no use making our eyes either red or moist. In all that we do, it is enough to bear in mind what the natural law is. If we appeal to the Englishman on the ground of lofty morality and say “Rise superior to the level of ordinary humanity and subordinate the interests of your country to those of India!” suppose he retorts “Look here, we’ll listen to your preaching later on, but will you first have the goodness to come down to our very ordinary level, and place the interests of your country before your own selfish ones, if you cannot give up your life, at least give up your money, your comforts, anything at all, for your country? Are we to do everything for you and you nothing for yourselves?” What are we to say to that? What after all are we doing, what are we giving? If we had only kept ourselves acquainted with our country, that would have been something,—but so lazy are we, we know next to nothing about her. The foreigner writes our history, we translate it, the foreigner discovers our grammar, we cram it! If we want to
