This is not only the case in the sphere of education. In no capacity, be it as magistrate, merchant, or policeman, does the Englishman present to us the highest that his racial culture has attained, and so is India deprived of the greatest gain that might have been hers by reason of his arrival, on the contrary, her self-respect is wounded and her powers deprived on every side of their natural development.
All the trouble that we see now-a-days is caused by this failure of East and West to come together. Bound to be near each other, and yet unable to be friends, is an intolerable situation between man and man, and hurtful withal. Therefore the desire to put an end to it must become overwhelming sooner or later. Such a rebellion, being a rebellion of the heart, will not take account of material gains or losses, it will even risk death.
And yet it is also true that such rebelliousness can only be a temporary phase. In spite of all retarding factors our impact with the West must be made good,— there can be no escape for India until she has made her own whatever there may be worth the taking from the West. Until the fruit is ripe it does not get released from stem, nor can it ripen at all if it insists on untimely release.
Before concluding I must say one word more. It is we who are responsible for the failure of the Englishman to give us of his best. If we remove our own poverty we can make him overcome his miserliness. We must rouse our powers in every direction before the Englishman shall be able to give what he has been sent here to give. If we are content to stand at his door empty-handed we shall only be turned away, again and again.
The best that is in the Englishman is not a thing that may be acquired by us in slothful ease, it must be strenuously won. If the Englishman should be moved to pity that would be the worst thing for us. It is our manhood which must awaken his. We should remember that the Englishman himself has had to realise his best through supreme toil and suffering. We must cultivate the like power within ourselves. There is no easier wav of gaining the Best.
Those of us who go to the Englishman’s durbar with bowed heads and folded hands, seeking emoluments of office or badges of honour,— we only attract his pettiness and help to distort his true manifestation in India. Those, again, who in a blind fury of passion would violently assail him, succeed in evoking only the sinful side of the Englishman’s nature. If, then, it be true that it is our frailty which excites his insolence, his greed, his cowardice or his cruelty, why blame him? Rather should we take the blame on ourselves.
In his own country the Englishman’s lower nature is kept under control and his higher nature roused to its fullest capacity by the social forces around him. The social conscience there, being awake, compels each individual, with all its force, to take his stand on a high level and maintain his place there with unceasing effort. In this country his society is unable to perform the same function. Anglo-Indian society is not concerned with the whole Englishman. It is either a society of civilians, or of merchants, or of soldiers. Each of these are limited by their own business, and become encased in a hard crust of prejudice and superstition. So they develop into thoroughgoing civilians, or mere merchants, or blatant soldiers. We cannot find the man in them. When the civilian occupies the High-Court bench we are in despair, for whenever there is a conflict between the Right and the civilian’s gods, the latter are sure to prevail,— but these gods are inimical to India, nor are they worshipped by the Englishman at his best.
On the other hand, the decay and weakness of the Indian Samaj itself is also a bar to the rousing of the true British spirit, wherefore both are losers. It is our own fault, I repeat, that we meet only Burra Sahebs and not great Englishmen. And to this we owe all the sufferings and insults with which we have to put up. We have no remedy but to acknowledge our sin and get rid of it.
