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.

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    one who lias had experience of similar cases tells the same story. The sympathies between the people and their English rulers can hardly be anything but imperfect. The system of caste and the differences in all our habits make social intimacy difficult. Instances of insolence and brutality on the part of Englishmen undoubtedly occur, but the assertion that they are very frequent is false. At the same time it is true that the ordinary Englishman is too rough and vigorous and straight- forward to be a very agreeable person to the majority of the Natives of India. These, however, are not reasons which seriously affect the popularity of our Government. Because, according to the only standards that we can accept, it is good it can hardly be popular. I never heard of a great measure of improvement that was popular in India, even among the classes that have received the largest share of education. No one who has lived, as I have done for the better part of my life, among the people can have towards them feelings other than those of sympathy and affection and respect. They have qualities which deserve all admira- tion, but they are intenselymonservative and intensely ignorant, wedded, to an extent difficult for Europeans to understand, to every ancient custom, and between their customs and religion no line of distinction can be drawn. We often deceive ourselves in regard to the changes that are taking place. We believe that our Western know- ledge, our railways, and our telegraphs must be breaking up the whole fabric of Hinduism, but these things, as I have said before, have touched only the merest fringe of the ideas and beliefs of the population of India. The vast masses of the people remain in a different world from ours. They dislike everything new, they dislike