The blind hatred of everything English with which the younger generation is so largely saturated can only, in most cases, be the result of the teachings that have impressed upon them the existence of a fundamental antagonism between Hindu ideals and ours.  Like the wretched Kanhere at Nasik, they would have to admit that they never suffered injustice themselves nor knew of any one who had.  A great many have never come into contact with a single Englishman, and their ignorance even of the system of government under which they live is profound.  Not the least ominous symptom is that this spirit of revolt seems to have obtained a firm hold of the zenana; and the Hindu woman behind the purdah often exercises a greater influence upon her husband and her sons than the Englishwoman who moves freely about the world.  Absolute evidence in such matters is difficult to obtain, but there was a very significant and quite authentic case last year, which I may as well quote here, though it occurred in the Bombay Presidency.  Two Brahman ladies of good position from Bombay were discovered at Kolhapur wearing the garb of sanyasis, i.e., mendicant ascetics.  They confessed that they had left their homes, to which the police wisely restored them, to invoke the assistance of a great ruling chief of Southern India in a plot to exterminate the hated foreigner, and their main object in starting upon this insane venture had been to regain their hold upon their husbands’ affections by a great “patriotic” achievement.  That real sanyasis are frequently the missionaries of sedition is certain, and their reputed sanctity gives them access to the zenana.  In Bengal even small boys of so tender an age as still to have the run of zenanas have, I am told, been taught the whole patter of sedition, and go about from house to house dressed up as little sanyasis in little yellow robes preaching hatred of the English.

The question is, can we extricate the better elements from this tangle of passion and prejudice?  There are many foul spots in the Hindu revival in Bengal, apart even from tendencies which we cannot but regard as politically criminal.  At the same time there runs through it a strain of idealism which probably constitutes its real force, and also our danger.  For strangely emotional and often a creature of his senses, the Bengalee is accessible to spiritual influences with which the worldly-ambitious Brahmanism of the Deccan, for instance, is rarely informed.  He is always apt to rush to extremes, and just as amongst the best representatives of the educated classes there was in the last century a revolt against the Hindu social and religious creed of their ancestors which tended first towards Christianity or at least the ethics of Christianity and then towards Western agnosticism, so the present revolt may be regarded in some of its aspects as a reaction against these earlier tendencies; and in spite of its extreme violence it may not be any more permanent.  The problem is still full of unknown quantities; but the known quantities are at any rate sufficient to make us appreciate its gravity.