THE BRITISH IN INDIA. rro ma EIIITOS OF ma spEcrAToz.n
Srit,—In your article of December 16th on " The New Capital of India " you say : " We could never have accomplished our work in India or maintained our position if our presence there were not a necessity. We are in India and are ruling India in the last resort because the people of India cannot do with- out us. Our domination is a necessary condition to the enjoyment of law, order, and just government by the three hundred million inhabitants of India." In this connexion you
may be interested to read an extract from a letter written to me some years ago by an Indian friend—now dead—who, after leading the Bar in his presidency with extraordinary ability
for many years, became a very distinguished Judge of the High Court :—
" Carrent events afford ample proof day after day how unsuit- able many of the English institutions are to India and how unwise it is to import them into the administration of this country. I for one am not an admirer of the British Constitution and of party government. It is all more or less the result of historical events and causes, and far from approaching perfection or an ideal form of government. But for that very reason my admiration for the British nation and race, its good sense and character, is all the greater. In spite of its cumbrous form of government, England is by far the best-governed country in the world. Why? In my humble .opinion it is because of the high character and good sense of the British nation, which cannot be implanted in India by the mere spread of literary education. I may be singular, but my idea as a true Hindu is that God has blessed India by relieving Indians from the most difficult and painful task of governing themselves, and God has conferred a still greater blessing on India by entrusting that task to the English nation. It is my fervent prayer that this blessing should be eternal and not merely tem- porary. Taking all in all, I think that the Indian population is now the most peaceful and comparatively the happiest nation in the world in spite of famines, epidemics, and the so-called poverty. If what I regard as the greatest blessing is withdrawn from this land at some future time, however distant it may be, I should, in my future existence, hold the British nation in no small degree responsible for such calamity, resulting chiefly from importing into this land British political institutions recklessly and without sufficient discrimination and safeguard."
am, Sir, &c., A. ARUNDEL.
Maybury Hill, Woking.
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