The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c6.22

c6.22

And it has never since occurred to Anglo-Indian historians that the great upheaval of 1857, when Hindu and Musalmân joined in a desperate Europeans like these machines, just as they like gramophones, pianolas, oleographs, and other mechanical devices, may be taken too seriously. The renaissance of Indian culture, of which there are many evident signs, is indirectly the effect of British administration. It might become its greatest strength, if instead of the pinchbeck Imperialism and spurious Nationalism which are now so rampant everywhere, a wiser policy informed by years handed down an oral tradition of the highest philosophy and the finest literature are not illiterate; though they use not pen and ink, they are not less cultured or intelligent than the majority of those who enjoy the franchise in Western countries. But when their own instruments of culture are taken from them, and replaced by others which they cannot or will not use, they tend to become illiterate and uncultured both in an Eastern and Western sense. The Anglo-Indian pedagogue has been sterilising Indian soil, so that he may plant in it seeds of a Western culture which will not grow. The Anglo-Indian statesman digs up the roots of Indian civilisation and expects to maintain law and order upon principles totally foreign to the Indian mind. The Indian masses are unfitted for Western forms of self-government, and will remain so as long as the British Raj endures; but they are not unfitted for self-governing functions which their fathers (and mothers) exercised for countless generations while the British Raj was yet unborn.