“He must be indifferent or unimaginative indeed who can read unmoved the pages of this volume. They are so instinct with passion of a consuming emotion, so fired with the force of a national conviction, that it is impossible to believe they can fail to impress all to whom liberty is more than a name and country more than a mere geographical expression. Of the facts and aspirations they so vividly record, few are more competent to speak than their author, for Lajpat Rai has long been in the forefront of the Indian Nationalist movement, and has suffered as well as striven in the promotion of its cause.”
The New Statesman (London):
“This is emphatically a book to be read by the Secretary of State for India himself, as well as by the members of the Council and the clerks in the India Office. It ought to be pondered over by every Indian civilian. It is not that it brings any new indictment against British rule in India, though much that Mr. Lajpat Rai says is very uncomfortable reading; but it reveals, alike to the Indian bureaucracy and to the British public, how unexpectedly acute and well-informed is the criticism to which our somewhat slow and stupid Administration is subjected, how completely it is out of touch with the thought of educated ‘Young India;’ how far we are from getting into sympathetic accord with the feelings and aspirations of the educated classes, Mussulman as well as Hindoo.... Those who read Mr. Lajpat Rai’s very significant volume (Will the Indian Government even allow it to enter India?) will not agree with all his statements or proposals. But they deserve to be widely read and carefully weighed. Every Briton would be the better for reading them. And they deserve an answer—not merely a reasoned refutation by the India Office of that which it thinks erroneous or perverse, but, what is much more important, a prompt reform of all that the India Office does not venture to defend.”
Reedy’s Mirror (St. Louis):
“The book is profoundly interesting as showing what the native thinks of British rule in India. Heretofore we have seen almost wholly through Caucasian eyes—mostly the eyes, of Englishmen, members of the government bureaucracy or missionaries, who have represented England as the great benefactor of India. Through the eyes of Mr. Rai we see an entirely different India—an India under a perfect despotism, in the main a benevolent despotism, but which does not hesitate to use the mailed hand when opposed.”
The Nation (London):
“The whole book is a definite and we believe an accurate statement of the present feeling among a rapidly increasing body of young and educated Indians who have learnt the value of political freedom and the difficulty of winning or retaining it.”
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR (IN ENGLISH)
THE ARYA SAMAJ