In defending your conduct you urge that India is not a nation. Very
well, sir, divide India into small nations and give them self-government
separately. You will admit that there are parts of India which are
homogenous, entitled to be called small nations in the sense in which
Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Holland are. The bulk of the
population follow the same religion, speak the same language and belong
to the same race. Remember, please, that I do not admit that India is
not a nation or that the sameness of language, religion and race is
necessary for a political national existence. Switzerland, Canada, the
United States, South Africa, Russia, and Austria-Hungary have demolished
that theory.
The apologists of the present system of Government in India say that the
Indian people are not sufficiently educated in the principles and
practice of politics and that their ignorance and illiteracy make it
necessary for the British to continue to rule them from without, until
they are fit to establish and maintain a democratic form of government.
I have already made some remarks about illiteracy and shown that the
responsibility for it rests on your shoulders. If you, sir, are to be
the sole judge of the educational requirements of the Indian people,
their progress is bound to hang on your convenience. No one in
possession is anxious to be dispossessed and if the time and method of
his dispossession is to be determined by himself, then woe to the
dispossessed! But, sir, you forget that literacy is not education. The
Indian masses have a background of centuries of culture which places
them in the matter of intelligence and character, in a better position
than even the literate millions of European and American countries. And
after all, it is intelligence and culture that count most in the fixing
of final values.
As for their training in political life, how are they to get it, if you
make it a penal offence for their leaders to tell them that the present
system of Government is unnatural, harmful, and a hindrance to progress?
The masses cannot grasp principles unless one illustrates these
principles by their application to the affairs of every day life. Your
Government and your courts say that an agitation for home rule is legal
and permissible, but any criticism that is likely to create
dissatisfaction is illegal and deserves to be suppressed high-handedly.
You know from experience, sir, that the masses require to be led. No
government is willing to make changes unless compelled from below. That
is as true of democratic America as of monarchical England. Much more
must it be so in the case of countries under foreign yoke. To carry the
people with them, the leaders must expose the existing evils and stress
the necessity and urgency of sweeping changes in political conditions.
The moment they proceed to do so with any degree of effectiveness, they
are charged with an attempt to create disaffection and convicted of
sedition. Do you honestly believe that any people on the face of the
earth can make any progress in political education when they are ruled
by a Press Act which stops criticism and discussion in the following
terms: