Page:Young India.pdf/31

Rh ” do sometimes see things in their true light, as the late Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., and Mr. H. W. Nevinson did.

In this connection I think the following remarks of the latest American writer on India, Professor Pratt of Williams College, Massachusetts, in his book on “India and Its Faiths” are very pertinent. Professor Pratt begins by warning the reader against “the point of view of the native” himself, as well as against “those European writers who seek to give an ultra ‘sympathetic’ picture of India.” But his observations about the other two of the four sources of information mentioned by him are extremely interesting. He says:

“Much greater is the danger that we, with our Western ideals and customs so different from those of India, should go to the other extreme and take one of the two remaining points of view that I referred to above. One of these is that which characterises a certain type (now happily decreasing) of earnest but narrow-minded missionary.” The fourth source of information, which, according to Professor Pratt, “one should regard with distrust,” comprises “the superficial tourist or the non-missionary European resident in India.” In his opinion this source is particularly dangerous, for “it is so natural to suppose that one of our own race who has travelled in India (and especially one who has lived there ‘twenty-two years’) will be in a position to know all about it… The tourist’s ignorance is not surprising, but it is not easy to understand the ignorance of the average European