India, Old and New eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 367 pages of information about India, Old and New.

India, Old and New eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 367 pages of information about India, Old and New.
but the beam in the other’s eye.  In Calcutta they have been far more rarely drawn together in commercial and industrial co-operation, and they have rubbed up less frequently against each other in healthy competition than, for instance, in Bombay.  It is one of the most promising features of the new reforms that the Europeans, who have hitherto taken very little interest in anything that was not directly connected with their own business or their own amusements, have been at last roused to play the part which it is their duty as well as their right to play in the political life of the country, and the men who have been returned to sit in the new Councils as the representatives of the European community seem to realise fully, the importance of the task that is before them in giving a practical example of what the helpful co-operation of Europeans with Indians can do to promote the healthy political life of the country.

In social service there is an equally large field of co-operation of which Calcutta has also provided an interesting illustration.  In no other city in India are University students, of whom there are nearly as many—­some 26,000—­at the one university of Calcutta as in all the universities of Great Britain put together, thrown so much on their own resources without any guidance or control.  The bulk of them may never come in contact even with European professors, let alone with the European community in general.  What opportunities have they of forming any opinion for themselves of what our civilisation stands for, except possibly through the medium of cheap cinemas in which its worst and most vulgar features are thrust before them?  Bengalee youths are extraordinarily quick to respond to the best European influence when it has once established contact with them.  Some teachers do secure a strong personal hold upon them, most of all in the missionary and other hostels where they live under the same roof with them, take part in their games as well as in their studies, and encourage them to express their own opinions freely and fearlessly.  There relations of mutual friendship and confidence grow up and endure.  In this respect the Y.M.C.A., in which Indian Christians act in close co-operation with broad-minded Englishmen, has done admirable work, and none better and with more definite and immediate results than when Government turned to them for assistance last year in the difficult situation created by the royal amnesty which required the immediate liberation of nearly a thousand young Bengalees who, having been more or less concerned in conspiracies and dacoities during the troublous years before the war, had been interned after its outbreak under administrative orders.  In many cases they had broken with their families, who were not inclined to take them back.  Many had no means of earning a livelihood.  To let them loose upon the world without any provision for them would have been to drive them to desperation.  The Y.M.C.A. stepped into the breach.  They were

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India, Old and New from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.