EVIDENCE BEFORE THE SOUTHBOROUGH COMMITTEE 269
relations of the future. It is happy to note that the pronouncement of the
20th August 1917 declared the application of the principle to India — a principle which enunciates the rule that every people must be free to determine the conditions under which it is to live. It would be a sign of imperfect realization of the significance of this principle if its application were restricted to international relations, because discord does not exist between nations alone, but there is also discord between classes from within a nation. Wittingly our Indian politicians in their political speeches and harangues hold to the de jure conception of the Indian people. By the de jure conception they conceive of the Indian people as by nature one and emphasize the qualities such as praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public ends and mutuality of sympathy which accompany this unity. How the de jure and de facto conceptions conflict, it is hoped, the committee will not fail to realize. As an instance the following may be noted. The moral evil to the Indian people of their conquest and subjugation by the British is a theme which is very attractive to the Brahmin politicians, who never fail to make capital out of it. The moral evils were once portrayed by John Shore in his “Notes on Indian Affairs” written in 1832. The late Honourable Mr. Gokhale once voiced the same feeling when speaking about the “excessive costliness of the foreign agency”. He said :
“There is a moral evil which, if anything, is even greater. A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on under the present system. We must live all the days of our life in an atmosphere of inferiority and the tallest of us must bend, in order that the exigencies of the existing system may be satisfied. The upward impulse, if I may use such an expression, which every schoolboy at Eton and Harrow may feel, that he may one day be a Gladstone or Napoleon or a Wellington, and which may draw forth the best efforts of which he is capable, is denied to us. The full height to which our manhood is capable of rising can never be reached by us under the present system. The moral elevation which every self-governing people feel cannot be felt by us. Our administrative and military talents must gradually disappear, owing to sheer disuse till at last our lot as hewers of wood and drawers of water in our own country, is stereotyped.”.
- I beg to invite the attention of the Committee whether these sentiments which have been voiced by a Brahmin (a noble Brahmin to be sure) to the disgrace of the British bureaucracy cannot be more fittingly voiced by the untouchables to the disgrace of the Brahmin oligarchy? May it be said to the credit of the bureaucracy, that it has disproved the charge of being wooden and shown itself susceptible to feeling by proposing changes in the system of the Government which has dwarfed the personality of those for whom it was devised. But can the oligarchy claim anything half as noble? Their belief is that the Hindu social system has been perfected for all time