Can we not give her a hand, and say, "Rise up and try to walk. I will hold your hand at first, till you are stronger. Then when you are grown you shall walk free, beside me, as my daughter whom I have brought up"?
I see continual denunciations of the unrest in India. Why? I see continual regrets that the past is passed—but why? Continual threats are breathed towards India. Why?
For myself, I hail it as the happiest omen that could be. It has unfortunate exhibitions sometimes; that is partly our fault, I fear, because we do not recognise that the past is gone for ever. India has grown, and we forget. We give no outlet to these true energies that have developed. India was our patient; now she is recovering shall we make of her a subject, or a daughter? She must be one or other, or leave us altogether, for the past is passed.
CHAPTER III
THE CIVILIAN
Let us now consider the Government and its ideas; that is to say, the men and the laws by which they govern.
First, take the personnel, for there is no complaint more insistent on all sides than that the officers of to-day are not the same as those of fifty or more years ago. They are out of touch with the people.
It was for some time supposed by Government that this was only partially true. That government itself, that is, the Secretariats, was out of touch, was felt and avowed. But it was supposed that this arose from the specialising of function. The work of secretaries had become so difficult, so special, so different from district work, that instead of there being interchange of officers, the secretaries usually passed all their official lives away from actual contact with the realities of the people. There were orders passed that in future this was not to occur, men were to come and go, to do district work for a while, and then secretariat work, bringing to the latter knowledge gained in the former.
But it was quickly seen that this had little or no result. If the secretaries were out of touch, the district officers were hardly less so. Government, as a whole, had separated from the people. English and Indian were divided; nothing was gained.
What, then, was the difference between the men of the past and those of the present? Let us consider.