E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesrestoration of peace, the East India Company, 'upon which', according to TheCambridge History, 'all parties in England agreed in throwing the blame of theMutiny", was abolished. In 1858, Queen Victoria assumed the government ofIndia and appointed Lord Canning her first Viceroy. For eighty-nine yearsthereafter, until August 15, 1947, India was a colony of the British Empire.The blood-and-plunder period was ended. England's ideals of clean governmentfiltered into the British administration of India. The British watered somedeserts and improved communications. Many British officials, after twenty orthirty years service in India, felt at home in India and like foreigners when theywent home to England. They were devoted to India. They ate out their heartsand ruined their health coping with difficult problems.The British in India, however, were a fifth caste, the first caste. Theyinterdined with Indians perfunctorily and intermarried seldom. The British werethe super Brahman- Kshatriyas; all Indians were 'untouchables'. The British werein India, never of India. They were like teachers who keep the class quiet andteach the children to read, write and reckon and to march in twos, but who donot really teach the children anything, nor help them, because they regardthemselves as animal trainers and the children as nasty animals.The British were masters in somebody else's home. Their very presence was ahumiliation. Despite the best intentions of the best among them, their everyact was a humiliation- Then they complained, with pain, that Indians were'ungrateful'- The complaint was a measure of the lack of understanding-The British never deciphered the palimpsest which is India- They merely readthe inscription on the surface: India was a weak, dirty, backward country, withsome fine monuments of be sure, and some superior brains, but generallyinferior, and Asiatic.Even if the British had converted India into a land flowing with milk and honeythey would have been disliked. Imperialism, like dictatorship, sears the soul,degrades the sprit and makes individuals small the better to rule them. Fearand cowardice are its allies. Imperialism is government of People, by otherwww.mkgandhi.org Page 190