[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —One reads with regret
the short article in the Spectator of December 28th called, " Wanted—a New Mental Outlook on India." Readers who have experience of Indian peoples and their needs will tell you that the article is honeycombed with inaccuracies and false conceptions.
If you are a sportsman and would like the errors of your article made public for the benefit of the Indian peoples whoin it professes to champion, you will, I think, permit these lines to appear in the Spectator.
Mental outlooks on India, both new and old, are but waves of thought surging round three rocks. One rock is the British government of India. Another is the so-called politician, and the third is the wishes of the Indian people.
I ask you, Sir, as a supporter of the British Constitution and our ideas of justice, which of the three should receive the most consideration in a " new Mental Outlook " ? Your answer, one hopes, will be unreservedly " the wishes of the Indian people."
So I will now direct the " new mental outlook " towards some of the many misconceptions likely to deceive the public and electorate of Great Britain.
1. The article states : " But Great Britain must remember that a solemn pledge has been given that responsible govern- ment is to be the goal " and that " India is to be an equal."
I ask the writer what he considers to be " responsible government " and in what way our present administration falls short of the term and requires a new " outlook" ?
Having lived for a quarter of a century in India, north, south, east and west, and mixed intimately with those who do represent the vast bulk of the peoples of India, I can assure your writer that it is the wish of the Indian country folk to be left alone to live in peace under the administration of justice evolved since the days of the Mutiny ; and that they have, and always will have, a supreme contempt for the integrity of any magistrate who is not an English gentleman.
When a leopard can change his spots will be time enough for a new mental outlook on this fundamental matter.
2. A further utterance we fmd in your article : " But if we can assure Indian Nationalists that an increasing number of Englishmen see their point of view and are genuinely anxious to advance the welfare of India by every means in their power."
Who, Sir, are the Indian Nationalists ? India is no more one nation than Europe is one nation.
The Indian peoples do not want to be a nation. They want to live in peace and comfort as they have done in the past and they look to the present administration to help them to this end by suppressing those misguided and unscrupulous agitators and so-called politicians who try to foist new mental outlooks on the electorate of Great Britain to the misery of the Indian peoples.—I am, Sir, &c., HIRED ASSASSIN.
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