Page:Young India.pdf/69

Rh ture to say in this place that the Rulers of India still seem to mistrust the people.”

Comparing the policy of the British with Imperial Rome, Mr. Wacha concludes:

“We all devoutly hope that profiting by this great achievement, Great Britain will not deny any further to the Indian people the exercise of arms, the want of which for so many years has led to their emasculation.”

This word “ emasculation ” affords the key to the situation in India from the purely Indian point of view. Political, physical and economic “ emasculation ” is the keynote of British rule there, and however they may cloak it with wrappings of pleasant and golden words, and however they may conceal it in finely woven sentences, like the cloven feet it emerges at almost every step. The Modern Review puts it well when it says:

“ Under bureaucratic rule, India is the poorest, the most unhealthy and the most ignorant among civilised countries, and her poverty and unhealthi¬ ness are not diminishing, and education is spreading at a slower pace than that of the snail. The remedy is Home Rule.”

There is another brief quotation which I will give, from the speech of the President of the last session of the Indian National Congress, viz., the one relating to the poverty of India. He says:

“ Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to whether India is growing richer or poorer under the British rule, there is none with regard to her