Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c5.s3.27

c5.s3.27

All our native establishments, military or civil, are the followers of fortune. They serve us for their livelihood and generally serve us well. From a sense of what is due to the hand that feeds them, which is one of the virtues that they most extol, they may often display fidelity under trying circumstances, but in their inward feelings they partake more or less of the universal disaffection, which prevails against us, not from bad government, but from natural and irresistible antipathy; and were the wind to change to use a native expression, and set in steadily against us, we could not expect that their sense of honour, although there might be splendid instances of devotion, would keep the men on our side, in opposition to the common feeling, which, with one view, might for a time unite all India, from one end to the other.³⁹