Intellectual Leadership in Contemporary India
IN the leading European countries, as well as in Japan, there has been an uninterrupted development of national culture, disturbed at times, retarded, warped by external factors, yet in the main a continuous growth. There has at least been no violent break in traditions, from the Nibelungenlied to Hauptmann, from Beowulf to Tennyson, yes, even from Tacitus to Renan, from Aristotle to Lord Kelvin. The literature, science, philosophy, ethics, of to-day are intimately connected with our past traditions, out of which they have been gradually developed. Nor has there ever been a long period of decadence and stagnation; for as the Roman world fell into decay, the vigorous Germanic nations were giving themselves their first schooling in a more progressive civilization. In this the circumstances of the Orient, especially India, have differed widely from our own. There the great things lie in the past, and, for centuries prior to the coming of the British, the national mind, despairing of any higher destiny, or flatly contented, turned its eyes to the past for all guidance and inspiration. It was an era of intellectual languor, satisfied that the best had been said and the greatest achieved, — not a resolute striving for still higher advance. Then suddenly this connection with the past was severed, and the Indian intellect was invaded by the conflicting notions and ideas of European literary culture, imparted in a superficial manner.
It is a fact that the intense curiosity aroused among us by the Orient was in a measure reciprocated with regard to Western learning by a large part of the Indian cultured world, even in the first era of more intimate contact. The Indians were lukewarm in the support of their own traditional culture, and their youth crowded the opening portals of Western learning. Was it a true hunger for mental sustenance, was it idle curiosity, greed for novelty,which affects even the staid and stoic East? or was it even less dignified — connected with the quest for clerical employment?
Enthusiasm for the learning of the conquerors is indeed a frequent phenomenon: as the East Indians were eager to learn English, so are the Filipinos ; so the Negroes of North America and of the West Indies yearn for a literary education. Undoubtedly motives of a mixed nature are active in this matter; chief among them, however, being a desire for intellectual equality with the ruling race. In India, where the educational system was made the gateway to preferment in the native civil service, narrowly utilitarian methods and practices soon began to dominate. It is curious to consider the effects produced when a purely cultural factor — literary or artistic — is turned into an instrument for obtaining an extraneous advantage, when it is associated with a utility foreign to itself. In India, education came to be regarded, not as a development and an unfolding of the mind, an adaptation to social environment and a fitting for social service, but as a condition to being employed by the government and earning a clerk’s salary.
No system could have been more successfully devised for the intellectual emasculation of a rice than this “introduction of the Eastern mind to the treasures of our literature and philosophy.” Instead of training the power of observation in the bracing discipline of science, developing reason and judgment through social and historical investigation, and using literary studies for the nourishment of the critical and constructive faculties, Indian education has been made up mainly of learning by rote parts of an alien literature and half-understood summaries and abstracts. On account of the utilitarian character of the system, there has not even been an adequate or fruitful study of the classical and vernacular literature of India itself.
In brief, the net result achieved thus far, while the above methods were in use, has been to exaggerate certain native defects of the Indian intellect. Through pursuing dialectic and literary studies for ages, the Indian mind has become remarkably subtle, but also unused to direct observation, untrained in independent judgment,fond of wordy discussions, volatile, and unpractical. Thus by one of those strange paradoxes of which history is so fond, this system, introduced to liberate the Indian mind from the superstitions of a backward learning, has had the result of enslaving rather than setting free, of weakening rather than building up, the intellectual forces of India. At present its defenders and friends are few, but the effects produced will not soon be obliterated, though coming generations be better trained.
Looking now at the present situation of Indian intellectual life, without further emphasis upon the harm directly caused by an unfortunate system, we note as one of its most striking, yet natural, indirect results, an unusual dissociation of the educated from the masses of the people. The educated world is of course everywhere in danger of losing its contact with the broader currents of human lifeand experience; but in India, where the learned class has been reared upon an alien culture, this detachment is especially noticeable. The intellectual leaders are not fully understood by their own people; in other words, those whose intellectual powers entitle them to leadership have received from their education little assistance toward making such leadership effective. The intimate ideas, images, and notions that appeal to the Indian masses are derived from the Vedas, the Puranas, Kalidasa, not from Burke, Hume, and J. S. Mill. The subject-matter of Indian education is alien, and not of such a nature as to give the minds trained in it that acknowledged and almost irresistible power, which a thoroughly adequate education would bestow. An Indian orator, who wishes to appeal to the masses, must unlearn his alien ideas and steep himself again in the native lore. We know the high motives which led to the establishment of Western learning in India; yet if a follower of Machiavellian statecraft had created the Indian government, he could not have devised a shrewder means of sterilizing natural leadership than by making intellectual culture alien and literary.
It may here be noted that the actual influence of the educated natives has often been overestimated by the European observer. Their command of the English language enables them to make themselves heard in the world. But, on the other hand, their alien training prevents them from being always the effective interpreters of what the three hundred millions of the Indian masses feel. It is this fact which makes it so difficult for an outsider to form an accurate judgment on Indian political conditions. He may listen to the sober and optimistic reports of the government, or to the contemptuous prejudices of the resident commercial Europeans and their press, or to the strident manifestoes and denunciations of the educated natives. Yet, how is he to form a correct view of the needs and feelings of the silent millions untouched by European culture, patient of conquerors, plodding and poor, but apt to move suddenly with the massive impact of a landslide or the tumultuous sweep of a typhoon? During the last few years, it is true, a great advance has been made in unifying the feelings and sentiments of all classes in India, and in making the leadership of the intellectual and educated more effective. But all the relations of public life in India still suffer from the dualism which has been pointed out.
But while the education in English has raised a wall between the learned and the masses, it has, on the other hand, exercised a unifying effect by giving India a common language; a language, it is true, which is used as their mother tongue by less than one-thousandth of the Indian population, and of which only a slightly larger port ion of the natives have a good speaking knowledge; yet throughout the length and breadth of India, the educated classes can now be appealed to in this common vernacular. There has grown up an English native press, comprising some excellent , and numerous indifferent, periodicals and journals: and more than a thousand books are annually published in that language in India. It is the language of the lecture platform, and of the learned and political societies. The speeches in the Indian National Congress, in the general educational and social-reform congresses, are delivered not in Hindi or Bengali or Tamil, but in English. That the growth of a feeling of national unity among the Indian people has been helped by this fact goes without saying; yet the influence is not deep or farreaching enough to afford a basis for a true national regeneration; for that purpose a native vernacular would be needed.
There is no likelihood that English will become the language of the masses in India, or of any very considerable portion of the population. Nevertheless its status as a literary language of the educated is not without its importance. For one thing, it keeps these classes in touch with European public opinion, and while it arouses in them political aspirations, it also makes them feel wherein their own culture and civilization are defective. Thus it is the native leaders of opinion who are most strenuous in their advocacy of a reform in education, in their demand for scientific training.
English is the language of conscious reasoning, of reflected thought, in India. Though creative literary expression has been attempted in English by Indian writers, they have achieved only a moderate amount of success. They have not come within measurable distance of the creation of a true AngloIndian literature, which would express and interpret the inner movement of Indian life, the deeper motives and feelings of t he Indian soul. The delightful poems of Toru Dutt, and Ramakrishna’s Tales of Ind are, after all, exotic. It is but natural that English has not become t he language of the heart — of fireside tales and love-songs; still, as an instrument of exposition, argumentation, and description, it is being employed with great aptitude by numerous Indian writers, some of whom occasionally attain the level of the ablest English expository essayists.
Though the critical doorkeepers of even the better Indian reviews do not always succeed in shutting out articles of diffuse content and apprentice-like workmanship, a faithful reader of such periodicals as the Hindustan Review, the Indian Magazine, the Indian World, the Modern Review, East and West, will again and again be rewarded by some article of admirable clearness or true literary charm. This frequent mastery of a strong and nervous English style, which exacts an unfailing homage from those newly acquainted with Indian writing, is the one redeeming result of the educational system, as well as a proof of the adaptiveness of the Indian mind. The style of some of these writers would indeed satisfy the most exacting taste. Their diction is lucid and agreeable, their suggestions are subtle, their grasp of general ideas is impressive, their information wide and varied. They, however, often lack a sense of humor and a just appreciation of values, — which occasionally robs their writings of effectiveness to us.
The means of expression at the command of the Indian educated world are peculiar, in that they consist of a foreign language in which higher education is carried on, and in vernaculars which have but a short and meagre literary history. The older languages in which the treasures of Indian thought and expression repose, are still widely studied, and even employed as a medium for writing. Every year over five hundred Sanskrit books are published in India. Yet, however valuable as a language of classical scholarship, Sanskrit cannot be revived as a vernacular and adapted to the present literary needs of India.
History seems to point to Hindustani as the coming language of India, if, indeed, a common vernacular is finally to beadopted. This language is among the most lavishly endowed in existence. As English rests upon the solid substructure of a sturdy Saxon speech, and has been enriched t hrough Norman French with the treasures of the Latin language, so Hindustani is an idiom based upon Hindi, the popular tongue of Upper India, a vernacular derived from Sanskrit, to which has been added the wealth of Persian and Arabic diction. Both Hindi, in which the Sanskrit element predominates, and Urdu, rich in Persian ingredients, have a noteworthy literature; they converge in Hindustani, in which all this rich inheritance of speech
— such is the hope of the lovers of this language—is to be preserved in a tongue subtle and strong, direct, delicate, and expressive, capable of supplying the literary needs of a great nation. A society has recently been formed at Benares (Nagri-Pracharini Sabha) for the purpose of fostering the historic study of Hindi, and of bringing to light earlier manuscripts of literary value.
The conscious effort to develop the literary possibilities of the vernacular languages is of recent origin. It is to a large extent due to the quickening of the Indian intelligence which followed upon the first contact with Western reform ideas in the earlier half of the past century. Of this movement the BrahmoSomaj was the centre. The men whose mental horizon had been widened by the new ideas, looked, for a medium to communicate the thought that was burning within them, to larger circles of their fellow men. The vernaculars
— thus far used chiefly for oral communication — had been employed to a certain extent in poetic expression, but not in serious discussion in written prose. Rammohun Roy, one of the strongest advocates of Western learning and education, at the same time did pioneer service in making of Bengali a literary language. He took the initiative in creating a vernacular press in India. The impulse given by him was quickened by the great scholars Ishwar Ch. Vidyasagar and A. K. Dutt, who are generally considered as the real founders of Bengali prose.
Modern vernacular literature thus bears a strong imprint of Western, especially English, models and ideas; it is a reflex result of English education. The dialects of Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, and Hindi, have especially shared in this development. The best known novelist of modern India, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, as well as the poet Rabindra Nath Tagore, and the dramatist Dinabandhii, used Bengali; Tulsi Das, whose works have passed through hundreds of editions, wrote in Hindi; while the Urdu side of Hindustani boasts as leaders of its literary expression the court poets Munshi Ameer Ahmed Ameer and Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh, in whom lived the traditions of Persian song. Dinabandhu’s tragedy, Nil Darpan, a counterpiece to Dekker’s Max Havelaar, is strongly influenced by Western literary forms, though its subject-matter is Indian — the woes and sufferings of peasant existence. The romances of Bankim were inspired by Sir Walter Scott, though the materials from which they are wrought are Indian thought, tradition, and social convention. Such books as Durgesa-Nandini, Kapâla Kundalâ, Chandra Shekar, and The Poison Tree, afford an interesting survey of Indian life, traditions, and social ideals. From the point of view of art, their style is so simple and their thought so naive as to give them an almost archaic flavor.
Bankim’s books, Ananda Math and Devi Chau Dhurani, have become factors in the present unrest in India. The former, a story of a conspiracy to drive out the early English conquerors, contains the original of the national hymn, Bande Mataram. The romantic view of Indian history contained in these books has had a powerful influence in arousing the national spirit of India. The relation is not unlike that of early nineteenth-century romanticism to the development of German national life. So strong are the feelings that have been stirred up by these books that the government has been on the verge of forbidding their further publication as seditious, though they were written forty years ago.
Among the activities which radiate from the centres of Indian intellectual life, scientific research is the most slender and fitful. The apparatus of scientific scholarship is almost entirely lacking. The present resources of India are so poor that it has not been possible to establish well-furnished laboratories or even libraries. There is scarcely a high school in the larger cities of the United States which has not a better scientific equipment than can be found at any Indian institution of learning, with one or two exceptions. In all Bengal there are only two or three professors who have been encouraged and placed in a position to do research-work. While in Japan many hundreds of students engage in advanced research, Bengal cannot muster more than a score. Recently a wealthy Parsee, Mr. Tata, following in the footsteps of our own Carnegie, gave some million rupees for the foundation of a scientific institute in Bombay. On a smaller scale, a number of technical schools and scientific institutes have been founded, among them the memorial to Sir Amar Singh, established last year by his brother the Maharajah of Kashmir, at Srinagar. Thus what formerly would have been the occasion for the erection of some merely ostentatious monument, is now transformed into an aid toward higher national efficiency.
Native educational reformers are fully alive to the need of India for scientific research and training. Thus the Mohammedan college at Aligarh (Koil) combines a thorough scientific education with the study of the Islamite culture. The projects for a national Hindu university, in every case, include provisions for advanced courses in the natural sciences. The government, too, is beginning to give heed to these demands. It has established a few research scholarships, and seems inclined to give a more scientific turn to education. Yet many Anglo-Indians harbor a strong sentiment against letting the natives share in the scientific command over the forces of nature.
The scientific investigation of historic facts, so closely allied to the method of the natural sciences, has also received little encouragement in India. The Oriental mind is not predisposed to historic studies. True, the past appears all-important, but it is a static past, the age of some great reformer or religious leader, the past as enshrined in the sacred books. Or again, it is the past as idealized in the romantic fiction of a Bankim. As a development of which the present is the natural outcome, and through which alone it can be understood, history has lacked votaries in the East, although the evolutionary conception is clearly enough contained in Buddhist thought. Historic consciousness is one of the most striking characteristics of Western civilization, more especially of Western nationalism.
Among Oriental peoples, it is Japan alone, with its nationalistic spirit, that has anything approaching the Western conception of history. Moreover, special difficulties and discouragements confront the student of Indian history. The documentary records are unreliable and fragmentary. The continuous series of chronicles, charters, and lawbooks, which give a solid foundation to Western historic scholarship, as well as the cultural background provided by the Greek and Roman historians, are lacking in India. A satisfactory tracing in detail of the movements of Indian history is thus rendered almost impossible. There is a great uncertainty about dates and localities, and, although antiquarian details may be agreeable to some minds, there is no powerful fascination in investigations and controversies confined to such matters, with only a remote chance of satisfactory determination.
The deep interest of the more recent development of India has indeed inspired the labors of such men as Romesh C. Dutt (Economic History of India), and Pramatha N. Bose (Hindu Civilization during British Rule); moreover, with the awakening of a sense of Indian nationality, historic research is being enlivened and roused to greater effort. Little enough encouragement has come from the schools. History is taught, in a cut-and-dried fashion, from outlines and manuals which are mechanically memorized, though only half-understood. In some of the universities it is even possible to take honors in history without having received any university training in Indian history at all.
More has been accomplished on the side of literary history and criticism. The most original and powerful of Indian scholars, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and Rajendra Lal Mitra, gave their chief attention to such studies. These men exemplify in their intellectual life the best results of the contact between East and West. With their intelligence quickened and their mind enriched by Western learning, they remained true to their native culture, which they studied from a new point of view. The name, Vidyasagar,— Ocean of Learning, a nom de guerre, or might we say nom de savoir, like the titles bestowed on great mediaeval teachers, — was conferred on its holder by his alma mater. With a head resembling that of Esopus as pictured by the Greek sculptor, this Indian scholar, versed in all the classic lore of his country, was no less deeply interested in the broad currents of humanity than was the Greek fabulist, nor was he entirely without the other’s sense of humor. He found time to become a leader in social-reform movements and to do for the Bengali dialect what Luther had done for his Saxon tongue. Rajendra Lal Mitra, a man of superb bearing, a sinewy and erect body crowned with a leonine head, a man moreover of proud, unbending spirit, was perhaps the greatest Indian scholar and critic of the nineteenth century, — from our point of view at least.
Among the intellectual leaders of New India none have attracted more attention with us in the West than the religious and social reformers. Not only are the expressions of religious sentiment in the Orient in themselves deeply significant to us, but in this case our interest has been intensified because we have believed that we were witnessing an essential modification of Oriental thought consequent upon the contact with Western Christianity. That the Brahmo-Somaj movement was actually inspired by, and received its guiding impulse from, contact with the scientific West, is of course evident; but it is a more doubtful question how far the monotheism of Christianity exerted a distinctive and definite influence, although the Indian rationalist movement is full of assonances to Christian thought in its Unitarian form. The three sects into which the BrahmoSomaj is now divided, together have less than five thousand members. They are indeed congregations of highly intellectual and spirituel people, to be compared with bodies like the old Positivist Society of London. But the movement has nothing of the passionate sweep of a religious reformation. Though its ideas have exerted a great influence upon the thoughtful men of India, yet on the vast surface of the sea of the Indian masses they have produced but a slight ripple. Their real importance must be sought in a powerful liberalizing impetus to Indian thought.
More representative of the older religious spirit of India are the followers of Ramakrishna, among whom the recently deceased Vivekananda was the most engaging figure. He received an English education, and had early in life been attracted by Brahmoism, though he became estranged from that movement through what he called its lack in spiritual depth. In these men the older traditions of Indian religious life were dominant. They withdrew from the world for meditation, they clung to the Vedas as revealed, they rested satisfied with the old philosophy of India. But they saw it with new eyes, they called for a stronger expression of personality, a more active devotion; to use a current word, they were more pragmatic than the older religious teachers of India had been. In this practical tendency the contact with Western civilization made itself felt rather than in the philosophic form of their thought. In the words of Vivekananda, “The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in everything else, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it. All mystery-mongering weakens the human brain.” Language such as this, which might have proceeded from so radical an energist as Nietzsche, shows how little the vulgar wonders of “theosophy" have in common with the truly important philosophical and religious movements in India. Theosophy, far from discovering for us the light of Asia, deals preferably with half-understood mystic elements, which the leaders of Indian thought look upon as remnants of a darker age now happily outgrown, and never in accord with the true light of Asian thought.
Religious beliefs are in India so closely bound up with social observances and institutions that the one cannot be modified without directly involving the other. As the organization of the family and of the castes rests upon religious authority, any change in the customs of marriage, family property, and inheritance, inevitably conflicts with some accepted socio-religious dogma, toward maintaining which intact all the conservative forces of society cooperate. The liberalizing of religious belief, and the unfettering of social action, are therefore in India usually two aspects of the same movement: to rationalize religion and to secure a more endurable existence for widows have been purposes constantly allied in practice. Without exception, all religious reformers have been propagandists of social freedom as well — though differing in degree as to the amount of social liberty to be striven for. Vivekananda and his associates, dwelling on the spiritual side of religion, and conservatives in temper, do not expect much from mechanical reform. But Vivekananda himself specifically insisted upon freedom of travel and of diet, and condemned the spirit of all trammeling conventions. Ambitious proposals for new institutional forms of society he encountered with less assurance. The work of the Somajes tends toward social reform in a preeminent degree. Even the conservative Arya Somaj favors the remarriage of widows and similar reforms of family law. The Brahmos wage direct war against the entire caste-system, and it is they who form the real centre for social-reform agitation.
Problems of social life are everywhere interrelated with matters of politics, but in India this connection is especially close; the various fields of human activity have in that country not yet been differentiated as they have been in tine West, and the master fact — an alien political dominance — gives a peculiar coloring to all national problems. In recent years political questions have more and more overshadowed all other considerations, and the leaders of native thought have entirely concentrated their attention on political action. In religious and social reform they encounter the sullen indifference of the uneducated masses. They well-nigh despair of accomplishing a regeneration of India in that direction. The social reformers are virtually occupying the same position as that taken by Rammohun Roy seventy-five years ago; they have indeed made progress in securing adherents as well as practical results, but they have not as yet reached the masses of India directly. One of the chief effects of literary education in India is the development of a spirit of skepticism, a questioning of authority. This questioning was at first directed against the authority of native custom and religion. At present it is directed more and more against the authority of the alien government. It is not strange that the Indian youth should apply Edmund Burke’s invectives against tyranny to political conditions in India; they are less prone, however, to emulate his sage conservatism.
It would be misleading to attribute the present “unrest” in India to a superficial stirring up of the people by irresponsible agitators. On the contrary, the whole impact of the strain of the attempted adjustment between the old and the new, the East and the West, has now become concentrated upon political relations, and all the latent dissatisfaction of a vast society, poor and dependent, is seeking a vent in political agitation. No police action, no methods of repression, can solve this difficulty; the danger of a catastrophe can be avoided only by far-seeing and statesmanlike action which will create a satisfactory basis for permanent relations of confidence and mutual respect, combining the maintenance of British authority with proper concessions to the dignity of Indian national life.
As yet the depths of native life have not been stirred, but signs are plentiful that the patient masses may before long be drawn into the political whirlpool. The intellectual leaders of India have gradually come to the conclusion that their leadership is exposed to sterility on account of the lack of a broad, popular following. They may write and talk to their hearts’ content, but their hearers will be only themselves — already persuaded to satiety. Real power over the destinies of their country is denied them by the organization into which Indian political life has been cast through the conquest. They have therefore concluded that all other considerations must be postponed in favor of a crusade for more power in the hands of the native leaders. They are willing to “let up ” in their attacks upon native abuse in order to secure the encouraging support and solid backing of their less enlightened fellow subjects. Thus the ardor for social reform wanes, while political excitement is fanned to a white heat.
In a country where the opportunities for exercising a direct influence upon the political destinies of the people are so limited, it is natural that extra-governmental centres and organizations should be created for the discussion and agitation of national policies. Of this nature are the National Congress and the various provincial assemblies, as well as minor clubs and meetings. The entire literary and social life of India has in fact taken on a political tinge. Whenever Indians meet in larger or smaller numbers for the discussion of religion, industry, social reform, or education, they invariably discuss political matters. Thus the platform of such congresses has afforded a great opportunity for achieving a certain amount of national prominence. It is unfortunate for India that this kind of leadership is generally without any regular connection with actual public affairs, that it is not tested in practical administration, as is the political leadership in most other countries. Yet the men who have thus obtained prominence are in many respects worthy of the confidence which has been reposed in them. Their chief weakness has been their national love of generalization, accentuated by lack of training in the responsible conduct of public affairs. The process of meeting year after year to pass the same resolutions and to express the same sentiments, would have cooled the ardor of a less idealistic race; but the leaders of India, undaunted by the present barrenness of their labors, have confidently looked to a more propitious future when the seed they have been sowing shall have grown into fruit. In the words of Ghokale, — “It is for us to serve our country with our failures, it will be for future generations to serve her with their successes.”
Yet at present a more impatient mood has seized the Indian world. The British system, with all the fair viceregal promises, has appeared to the natives more and more unyielding and supercilious. So there has arisen a group of violent agitators not satisfied with the methods of intellectual propaganda to which such men as Mehta and Ghokale have adhered. These newer men lack all steadying training, they base their action on abstract opinions without regard to the intricate and delicately adjusted facts upon which the Indian system rests, and their agitation is considered even by Indians as endangering the normal evolution of Indian political life. And yet the existence of such radical and unscrupulous agitators is a direct result of the fruitlessness of the conservative reform movement. The leaders of Indian thought have come to feel keenly their lack of the power of positive action; they know that so long as the people remain inert, their congresses may go on meeting year after year, passing the same insistent resolutions, without having as much effect on the government of India as the articles in an English provincial paper. The popular support so essential to a political movement, and through which alone they could bring pressure to bear upon the Indian government, seems denied them so long as they confine their efforts to congressional discussions, to lectures before educated audiences, and to social reform. The masses care not for social reform, nor for political disquisitions. Agitators are needed to stir them up; and we may well imagine that the arguments used by such persons will be more directly ad hominem than those contained in Mill on Representative Government.
It is a great misfortune to India that her true leaders are unable to reach the masses with the ideals by which they themselves are inspired, while irresponsible agitators are appealing to motives which in turn may arouse forces beyond the control both of the leaders themselves and of the government. That this system should result in a feeling on the part of AngloIndians which at times approaches panic, is very easily explainable. The materials dealt with, while ordinarily dormant, are nevertheless extremely explosive.
The present situation in India illustrates some of the unfortunate results of the political dependence of a civilized people. Not only politically, but also in economic matters, India is kept in a state of dependence on the metropole. But the most hopeless feature of the situation is that the men who would naturally be leaders in government and enterprise, find themselves excluded from opportunities for exercising legitimate power in their own country. Such a decapitation of an entire people is a great sacrifice to impose, even in return for the blessings of peace and an efficient policing of the country. The continuance of this policy would mean either the total destruction and degradation of Indian national life, or the end of the British raj. The policy of exclusiveness exercises an unfavorable influence on the civil service itself, in that, while a lower type of intelligence — a merely clerical faculty — is encouraged among the native officials, yet these inferior men, being of the soil and knowing local conditions, will necessarily have a great influence in fixing the character of the entire service and the quality of its work. The encouragement of higher types of ability through a greater liberality in official appointments would thus vitalize the service and strengthen its contact with the real forces of Indian life. Yet from the point of view of national destiny, the above considerations are of less importance than the tendency which is thus described by Mr. Ghokale: “A kind of dwarfing or stunting of the Indian race is going on under the present system. We must live all our life in an atmosphere of inferiority, and the tallest among us must bend in order that the exigencies of the system be satisfied.”