RANADE, GANDHI AND JINNAH 235
and those who know the conditions in China cannot do better than say “Perhaps in another hundred years.” Has China found a stable Government having the allegiance of all Chinese ? Far from it. Indeed if truth be told, China after the revolution has been a land of disunity and disruption far more than she was ever before. The Revolution has produced a chaos of such magnitude that her very independence has been put in peril. Few Indians are aware of the fact that if China has not lost her independence as a result of the chaos caused by the Revolution it is only because she had too many enemies who could not agree as to which of them should devour her. The Chinese Revolution was a great mistake. That was the opinion of Yuan Shih-k’ai who said :
“I doubt whether the people of China are at present ripe for a Republic or whether under present conditions a Republic is adapted to the Chinese people... The adoption of a limited monarchy would bring conditions back to the normal and would bring stability much more rapidly than that end could be attained through any experimental form of Government unsuited to the genius of the people or to the present conditions in China... My only reason for favouring the retention of the present Emperor is that I believe in a constitutional monarchy. If we are to have that form of Government, there is nobody else whom the people would agree upon for his place... My sole aim in this crisis is to save China from dissolution and the many evils that would follow.”
Those who think that China should be rather a warning to Indians than an example will, far from accusing Ranade for opposing India’s independence will be happy that he had the wisdom to foresee the evils of a premature revolution and warn his countrymen against taking a similar step.
X
Posterity is always interested in the last words and last regrets of great men. The last words of great men are not always significant of their experience of this world or their vision of the next. For instance the last thoughts of Socrates were to call Crito and say, “We owe a cock to Aesculapius; discharge the debt, and by no means omit it.” But their last regrets are always significant and worth pondering over. Take the case of Napoleon. Napoleon before his death at St. Helena showed evidence of being uneasy over three capital points which constituted his last regrets. They were: that he could not have died at some supreme moment of his career ; that he left Egypt and gave up his Eastern ambitions ; and last but by no means the least his defeat at Waterloo. Had Ranade any supreme regrets ? One thing is certain that Ranade if he had any, could not have the same regrets such as those which disturbed the peace of mind of Napoleon. Ranade lived for service and not for glory. It mattered very little to him whether the moment of his death was glorious or inglorious or whether he died as a hero, as a conqueror or