India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    527/552 page 497
    49 7 country .depends. Our Governors of provinces, the chief officers of our army, our District officers and their principal executive subordinates must be English- men under all circumstances that we can now foresee, and in all departments of essential importance there must be selected Englishmen to maintain a standard of high efficiency. It is not only in regard to the employment in India of our own countrymen that we ought never to forget differences of race. It is quite as essential to remember them in connection with the employment of Natives. I have often insisted on the fact that, strictly speaking, there is really no such country as India.1 I must repeat that such terms as “ People of India ” and “ Natives of India ” are meaningless in the sense in which they are frequently used. The term “ Natives of India ” applied generally to Brahmans from Bengal, Parsis from Bombay, Sikhs from Lahore, Gurkhas from Nepal, and to Gonds from the Central Provinces, has no more meaning than the term “ Natives of Europe ” applied generally to Englishmen, Poles, Spaniards, and Turks. As I have said before, no countries and no peoples in Europe differ from each other so profoundly as countries and peoples differ in India. No good administration or permanent political security is possible unless facts of this kind are remembered. It ought never to be forgotten that it can never be assumed that because a man is a “ Native of India ” he has__any natural claim, different in kind from that of an Englishman, to be employed in the public service in every part of India. Often, indeed, you may go much further. I used no terms of exaggeration when I said that a Native of Calcutta is more of a foreigner to the hardy races on the frontiers of Northern India 1 See Chapter I.
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