No More Learning

What does he really think of the Congress after all, and of the
elective system? "

"Hates it all like poison. When you are sure of a majority, election
is a fine system; but you can scarcely expect the Mahommedans, the most
masterful and powerful minority in the country, to contemplate their own
extinction with joy. The worst of it is that he and his co-religionists,
who are many, and the landed proprietors, also, of Hindu race, are
frightened and put out by this election business and by the importance
we have bestowed on lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have,
up to now, been in abject submission to them. They say little, but
after all they are the most important fagots in the great bundle of
communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for
their estrangement. They have controlled the land. "

"But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your
municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the principle
is accepted in your centres, don't you know, it is bound to spread, and
these important--ah--people of yours would learn it like the rest. I see
no difficulty at all," and the smooth lips closed with the complacent
snap habitual to Pagett, M. P. , the "man of cheerful yesterdays and
confident tomorrows. "

Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.

"The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn from
scores of municipalities, others have had to be summarily suppressed,
and, outside the Presidency towns, the actual work done has been badly
performed. This is of less moment, perhaps--it only sends up the
local death-rates--than the fact that the public interest in municipal
elections, never very strong, has waned, and is waning, in spite of
careful nursing on the part of Government servants. "

"Can you explain this lack of interest? " said Pagett, putting aside the
rest of Orde's remarks.
"You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every
thousand of our population can spell. Then they are infinitely more
interested in religion and caste questions than in any sort of politics.
When the business of mere existence is over, their minds are occupied by
a series of interests, pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like,
based on centuries of tradition and usage. You, perhaps, find it hard to
conceive of people absolutely devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the
daily paper, and the printed speech are unknown, and you would describe
their life as blank. That's a profound mistake. You are in another
land, another century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family
merely, and not the community, is all-important. The average Oriental
cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His life, too, is more
complete and self-sufficing, and less sordid and low-thoughted than you
might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never
empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to
forget that it is the man that is elemental, not the book. 'The corn and
the cattle are all my care, And the rest is the will of God. ' Why should
such folk look up from their immemorially appointed round of duty and
interests to meddle with the unknown and fuss with voting-papers. How
would you, atop of all your interests care to conduct even one-tenth
of your life according to the manners and customs of the Papuans, let's
say? That's what it comes to. "

"But if they won't take the trouble to vote, why do you anticipate that
Mohammedans, proprietors, and the rest would be crushed by majorities of
them? "

Again Pagett disregarded the closing sentence.