Indian Unrest (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...within easy reach of the latest thought, with unlimited moral and material resources, such as there is in India, should not remain content with simply asserting the equality of men under the common law and maintaining order, but must sympathetically see from time to time that the different sections of its subjects are provided with ample means of progress. Many of the Indian States where they are at all alive to the true functions of government, owing to less elevating surroundings or out of nervousness, fear to strike out a new path and find it less troublesome to follow the policy of laisser faire and to walk in the footsteps of the highest Government in India, whose declared policy is to let the social and religious matters of the people alone except where questions of grave importance are involved. When one-sixth of the people are in a chronically depressed and ignorant condition, no Government can afford to ignore the urgent necessity of doing what it can for their elevation. Can the Government of India afford to disregard so remarkable an appeal? The question is not merely a social and moral question, but also a political one. Whilst some high-caste Hindus are beginning to recognize its urgency, the more prosperous of the socially depressed castes themselves are showing signs of restlessness under the ostracism to which they are subjected. From almost all of these castes a few individuals have always emerged, who acquired wealth and the relative recognition that wealth brings with it, and the numbers of such individuals are increasing. In some cases a whole caste has seen its circumstances improve under new economic conditions entirety beyond its own control-like the Namasudras of Bengal, who, as agriculturists, have had their share of the growing agricultural prosperity of that region. They are materially better off than they used to be, and so they are no longer content with their old social status of inferiority. Not only Christian but...