WIIAT IS INDIA ?
[To THE ED1701 or rue " Serersroo."1
Stn,-1i is difficult to understand bow any one, if he has had lengthened experience in India, or is conversant with the wide range of Indian journalism, ran speak of Mrs. Besant's agitation as springing •• from the heart of the people; in it their very soul speaks. Merchant, lawyer, shopkeeper, landlord, prince, and peasant here alike embraced the cause." Plainly Mr. Houghton !Spectator, October 13th) is ignorant of the manifesto signed by sixty and more of the xemindars of South India, in which they emphatically repudiate the claim made by the Home Rulers that the landed aristocracy supported their demands. Then it is a notorious fact that such an agitation as this originates with, and finds its main support amongst, those who have received a Western education. They will be the first to benefit by any concession that may be made. But that class is an infinitesimal fraction of the people of India—how small, reference to the Census Report brings out: " In the whole of India, 1.7 million persons are literate in English." Nor is "the fear of increased Brahmin ascendancy under sclkorerinuent " to be set aside lightly, as Mr. Houghton would have us do. It has a very " real basis," for Brahmin ascendancy already endangers the interests of all other classes, iucluding Mohnromedans, as any one may see who will look at the ieterant statistics. Of Government posts carrying salaries of -MO a year and over, and filled by Indians, thirty-two per cent. are held by Brahmins, though they form less than five per cent. of the total population. Though forming more than twenty per cent. at the population, Mohammedans hold only seventeen per cent. of these pasts. It is not by adding power to the predominant caste that religious antagonism will be removed, or " the fetters of the
cads system " unshackled.—I am, Sir, etc., J. M. RESSELL.
Corsforpbiae, Midlothian.
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