PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 29
But be that as it may ; it seems to me that the aristocracy cannot escape the charge that its members have in them a class bias, a definite clanishness, a tendency to favour their own kindred, which makes them quite unworthy of being entrusted with power to decide the destiny of the masses. Indeed one might go to the length of saying that due to the great social gap that separates it from the masses and the superior isolation in which it lives, it cannot be said to be charged with the wants, the cravings and the desires of the masses; it may even be said that it is quite inimical to their aspirations. What makes me so emphatic in my assertion that the aristorcracy cannot be trusted with political power is because the root notions of democracy on the operation of which alone self-governing India can be safe for the masses run counter to all the ideas which for thousands of years have formed and do form even to-day the common stock of their beliefs. The fundamental principle of the modern democratic state is the recognition of the value of the individual, and the belief that as each individual has but one life, full opportunity should be accorded to each to attain his maximum development in that life. Neither of these propositions be said to form the part of the accepted philosophy of the aristocracy of India. They rather hold that the present life is for each only one of a series of existences, that the position of each individual in this life has been determined for him by his merits or demerits in his previous births, and that therefore no character howsoever high, no ability howsoever great which a man may have to his credit can alter his place in the social strata in which he is born. With the aristocracy the notion that a man born a Brahmin cannot be other than a Brahmin and a man born a Pariah cannot be other than a Pariah, is no idle talk; it is a living and operative faith. To give unrestricted power in the hands of the people of this sort is to arm the hangman with a knife.
- We, who take this attitude, are mercilessly denounced as communalists and often as the enemies of the country. The Congressman is never tired of reiterating that in every country power always rests in the hands of the intelligentsia and that in the interest of efficient administration it must always be so. Those who will have us leave the coming political power in the hands of the aristocracy seem to think that the social and