in number already in the Government of India, three in the Secretary of State’s Council in Whitehall, and in varying numbers both as Ministers and members of the Executive Councils in Provincial Governments.  Side by side with this progressive Indianisation of the Executive of which we are witnessing only the first stage, the Indianisation of the administrative departments and of the public services, and not least of the Indian Civil Service, is bound to proceed with increasing rapidity.  Indians can hardly fail to realise that, perhaps for a long time to come, they will require the experience and driving power of Englishmen, but they will inevitably claim increasing control over policy, now formally conceded to them in a large Provincial sphere, until it shall have extended in successive stages to the whole sphere of Provincial Government and ultimately to the Central Government itself.  Then, and then only, India will actually emerge into complete Dominion Self-Government.  But we shall do well to remember, and Indians will certainly not allow us to forget, that the terms of equality, on which her representatives are now admitted to the innermost counsels of the Empire, have already in many respects outstripped the Act of 1919.

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] The Evolution of Mrs. Besant, by the Editor of Justice, Madras, Justice Printing Works, 1918.

CHAPTER IX

THE EMERGENCE OF MR. GANDHI

Before this great statute could be brought into operation, and even whilst Parliament was still laboriously evolving it, a strange and incalculable figure was coming to the forefront in India, who, favoured by an extraordinary combination of untoward circumstances, was to rally round him some of the most and many of the least reputable forces which, sometimes under new disguises, the old and passive civilisation of India is instinctively driven to oppose to the disintegrating impact upon it of the active and disturbing energies of Western civilisation.  Saint and prophet in the eyes of the multitude of his followers—­saint in the eyes even of many who have not accepted him as a prophet—­Mr. Gandhi preaches to-day under the uninspiring name of “Non-co-operation,” a gospel of revolt none the less formidable because it is so far mainly a gospel of negation and retrogression, of destruction not construction.  Mr. Gandhi challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British rule.  He has passed judgment upon both British rule and Western civilisation, and, condemning both as “Satanic,” his cry is away with the one and with the other, and “back to the Vedas,” the fountain source of ancient Hinduism.  That he is a power in the land none can deny, least of all since the new Viceroy, Lord Reading, almost immediately on his arrival in India, spent long hours in close conference with him at Simla.  What manner of man is Mr. Gandhi, whom Indians revere as a Mahatma, i.e. an inspired sage upon whom the wisdom of the ancient Rishis has descended?  What is the secret of his power?