religion, not established on firmer ground than those
houses there on the river Ravi, whose existence is
not safe for a single day, because the river at times
takes it into its head to change its course.
A government that does not understand how to honour
the religious feelings of its people, does not stand
more securely than one of those huts. The fate
that has now overtaken the English is the best proof
of what I say. We are the only power in Asia
that has not founded its political sway upon the religion
of the people. In our folly we have destroyed
the habitual simplicity of a nation, which, until
our coming, had been content with the barest necessities
of life, because for thousands of years past it cared
more about the life after death than for its earthly
existence. We have incited the slumbering passions
of this people, and by offering to their eyes the
sight of European luxury and European over-civilisation,
have aroused in them desires to which they were formerly
strangers. Our system of public instruction is
calculated to disseminate among all classes of the
Indian race the worthless materialistic popular education
of our own nation. Of all the governors and inspectors
of schools who have been sent hither by England not
a single one has taken the trouble to penetrate beneath
the surface of the life of the Indian people and to
fathom the soul of this religious and transcendentally
gifted race. What contrasts are not the result!
Here a holy river, priests, ascetics, yogis, fakirs,
temples, shrines, mysterious doctrines, a manifold
ritual; while side by side, without any transition,
are schools wherein homely English elementary instruction
is provided, a State-supported university with a medical
school and Christian churches of the most varied confessions.”
“But how would it have been possible to combine
in a school modern scientific education with Indian
fanaticism?”
A superior smile flitted across the professor’s
intellectual face.
“Compare, I pray you, the tiresome trivialities
of English missionary tracts with the immortal masterpieces
of Indian literature! Then you will understand
that the Indian, even when he approves Christianity
as a system of morals, demands a deeper and wider
basis of these morals, and inquires as to the origin
of the Christian doctrine; and then he very soon finds
that all light which has come to Europe started from
Asia. Ex oriente lux.”
“I am not sufficiently well informed to be able
to answer you on this point. It may very well
be that even Christianity was not the offspring of
Judaism alone, but of Buddhism. It may also be
the case that the teachings of our missionaries of
to-day are too insipid for the Indians. But the
metaphysical needs of a people have, after all, little
to do with sound policy and good laws. Think
of Rome! The Roman state had most excellent laws,
and a magnificent political force which for centuries
kept it in its predominant position among the nations