Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/31

 22

“An Englishman cannot be expected to lose his own soul for the sake of other people’s politics.”

Here the author parenthetically explains the word ‘soul’ by saying that it denotes the habits and traditions of one’s race,

All this means, that Englishmen feel a sense of irreconcilable contradiction between their nature and ours; we are like twins, who, by some monstrous freak of destiny, have been tied together back to back. He concludes the summary of his Report by saying:

“But my own opinion is that India has more to gain and less to lose than any other Eastern country by contact with the West.”

He contemptuously ignores the fact that where no communication of sympathy is possible, gifts can be hurled, but not given; that while counting the number of gains by the receiver, we also have to consider the fracture of his skull; and while thanking the doctor for the rest cure, we must hasten to negotiate with the undertaker for the funeral.

It is the very irony of fate for us to be blamed by these people about the iniquity of our caste distinctions. And yet, never, in the blindness of our pride of birth, have we suggested that by coming into contact with any race of men we can lose our souls, although we may lose our caste which is a merely conventional classification. The analogy would be perfect, if the division of the railway compartments, with its inequality of privileges,