generally that of drawers of water and hewers of wood for their British masters.
All Europeans, Eurasians including Armenians and Jews can carry arms free of license; not so the Indians. In India, the ^Indians only are forbidden to carry arms except by special permission of their masters; and permission is of course granted very sparingly and as a matter of favour, as a special concession and not as a right. The highest, the noblest, and the purest among the Indians has to be excepted from the operation of the Arms Act, as an act of mercy on the part of his foreign rulers. In the hills of his own native country, where his parents, grandparents, and great grandparents before him were born, where they perhaps ruled or held positions of trust, where they died, where they fertilised the soil with their blood, and where within less than a century they enjoyed absolute freedom, he, their immediate descendant, must not carry an umbrella over his head to give him shelter from rain or sun without the risk of being kicked to death or being insulted by the lowest among the foreign masters of his country.[1]The hoary Himalayas, the beloved abode of his most respected divinities, are in some places virtually shut against him because the “white gods ” have developed a fancy for them.
But that is not all. Even outside India he carries the badge of political subjection with him. The British colonies, more than any other country, bang their doors on him. He is a pariah all over
- ↑ See Sir Henry Cotton’s New India (190?), PP- 68, 69 and
