It may be argued that in replying to a Viceregal Kharita, the Ruling Chiefs could hardly do less than recognize the existence of the “common danger” to which Lord Minto had drawn their attention.  But the careful analysis of the influences behind the agitation and the practical suggestions for dealing with it which the majority of the replies contain, prove that their opinions are certainly not framed “to order.”  They represent the convictions and experience of a group of responsible Indians better situated in some respects to obtain accurate information about the doings and feelings of their fellow-countrymen than any Anglo-Indian administrators can be.  The language of the Nizam is singularly apt and direct, “Once the forces of lawlessness and disorder are let loose there is no knowing where they will stop.  It is true that, compared with the enormous population of India, the disaffected people are a very insignificant minority, but, given time and opportunity, there exists the danger of this small minority spreading its tentacles all over the country and inoculating with its poisonous doctrines the classes and masses hitherto untouched by this seditious movement.”  The Maharana of Udaipur, speaking with the authority of his unique position amongst Hindus as the premier Prince of Rajputana, not only condemns an agitation “which is detrimental to all good government and social administration,” but declares it to be “a great disgrace to their name as also to their religious beliefs that, in spite of the great prosperity India has enjoyed under the British regime, people are acting in such an ungrateful way.”  No less emphatic is the Mahratta ruler of Gwalior:—­“The question is undoubtedly a grave one, affecting as it does the future well-being of India,” and “it particularly behoves those who preside over the destinies of the people and have large personal stakes to do all in their power to grapple with it vigorously.”  The Maharajah of Jaipur, one of the wisest of the older generation of Hindu rulers, agrees that “only a small fraction of the population has been contaminated by the seditious germ,” but he adds significantly that “that fraction has, it seems, been carefully organized by able, rich, and unscrupulous men,” and he does not hesitate to declare that “an organized and concerted campaign, offensive and defensive, against the common enemy is what is wanted.”

According to the Rajah of Dewas, one of the most enlightened of the younger Hindu chiefs, “it is a well known fact that the endeavours of the seditious party are directed not only against the Paramount Power, but against all constituted forms of government in India, through an absolutely misunderstood sense of ‘patriotism,’ and through an attachment to the popular idea of ‘government by the people,’ when every level-headed Indian must admit that India generally has not in any way shown its fitness for a popular government.”  He goes so far even as to state his personal conviction that history and all “sound-minded” people agree that India cannot really attain to the standard of popular government as understood by the West.