How the thought of Indian unity over against the sovereignty of Britain may reach down even to the humblest, the writer once observed in a humble street in Calcutta.  A working man was receiving his farthing’s worth of entertainment from a peep-show.  His eyes were glued to the peepholes, to secure his money’s worth, for the farthing was no small sum to him; and the showman was standing by describing the successive scenes in a loud voice, with intent both to serve his customer and to stimulate the bystanders’ curiosity.  Three of the scenes were:  “This is the house of the great Queen near London city,” “This is one of the great Queen’s lords writing an order to the Viceroy of Calcutta,” “This is the great committee that sits in London city.”  He actually used the English word committee, the picture probably showing the House of Commons or the House of Lords.  Thus the political constitution of India and its unity under Britain are inculcated among the humblest.  In the minds of the educated, one need not then be surprised at the growth of a sense of Indian unity over against British supremacy.

[Sidenote:  The Indian National Congress.]

[Sidenote:  English, the lingua franca of the Congress.]

The Indian National Congress, or All-India political association, is the embodiment of this new national consciousness of educated Indians, the only embodiment possible while India is so divided in social and religious matters.  Were there only ten or twelve million Mahomedans in India instead of sixty, the new national consciousness would undoubtedly have been a Hindu or religious, instead of a political, consciousness.  But in matters religious, Hindu looks across a gulf at Mahomedan, and Mahomedan at Hindu, neither expecting the other to cross over.  Christianity, third in numbers in India proper, proclaims the Christian Gospel to both Hindus and Mahomedans, but is regarded by both as an alien.[39] Nor is any All-India social movement possible while social differences are so sacred as they are.  But politically, all India is already one; her educated men have drunk at one well of political ideas; citizenship and its rights are attractive and destroy no cherished customs; and in the English language there is a new lingua franca in unison with the new ideas.  The Indian National Congress is the natural outcome.  There, representatives of races which a hundred years ago made war on one another, of castes that never either eat together or intermarry, now fraternise in one peaceful assembly, inspired by the novel idea that they are citizens.  The Congress meets annually in December in one or other of the cities of India.  The first meeting at Bombay in 1885 has been described as follows[40]:  “There were men from Madras, the blackness of whose complexions seemed to be made blacker by spotless white turbans which some of them wore.  A few others hailing from the same Presidency