"
"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement?
"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement?
Kipling - Poems
Shows how even Radicalism can fall into academic
grooves and miss the essential truths of its own creed. Believe me,
Pagett, to deal with India you want first-hand knowledge and experience.
I wish he would come and live here for a couple of years or so. "
"Is not this rather an ad hominem style of argument? "
"Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not
to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and upbringing
of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he
trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange
want of imagination and the sense of humor. "
"No, I don't quite admit it," said Pagett.
"Well, you know him and I don't, but that's how it strikes a stranger. "
He turned on his heel and paced the veranda thoughtfully. "And, after
all, the burden of the actual, daily unromantic toil falls on the
shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He enjoys all the
privileges of recommendation without responsibility, and we--well,
perhaps, when you've seen a little more of India you'll understand. To
begin with, our death rate's five times higher than yours--I speak
now for the brutal bureaucrat--and we work on the refuse of worked-out
cities and exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead. In the
case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests
of the altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahminical, and that
the whole thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of
Messrs. Hume, Eardley, Norton, and Digby.
"
"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement? "
"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This
seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal
about it; try it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly
trustworthy criterion, and there is scarcely the color of money in it.
The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for
working expenses, railway fares, and stationery--the mere pasteboard
and scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere
financial inanition. "
"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too
poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,"
Pagett insisted.
"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement is
the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin
described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very
interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed
almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have
received an English education. "
"Surely that's a very important class. Its members must be the ordained
leaders of popular thought. "
"Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight
here. "
Pagett laughed. "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde. "
"Is it?
grooves and miss the essential truths of its own creed. Believe me,
Pagett, to deal with India you want first-hand knowledge and experience.
I wish he would come and live here for a couple of years or so. "
"Is not this rather an ad hominem style of argument? "
"Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not
to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and upbringing
of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he
trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange
want of imagination and the sense of humor. "
"No, I don't quite admit it," said Pagett.
"Well, you know him and I don't, but that's how it strikes a stranger. "
He turned on his heel and paced the veranda thoughtfully. "And, after
all, the burden of the actual, daily unromantic toil falls on the
shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He enjoys all the
privileges of recommendation without responsibility, and we--well,
perhaps, when you've seen a little more of India you'll understand. To
begin with, our death rate's five times higher than yours--I speak
now for the brutal bureaucrat--and we work on the refuse of worked-out
cities and exhausted civilizations, among the bones of the dead. In the
case of the Congress meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests
of the altar are British, not Buddhist, Jain or Brahminical, and that
the whole thing is a British contrivance kept alive by the efforts of
Messrs. Hume, Eardley, Norton, and Digby.
"
"You mean to say, then, it's not a spontaneous movement? "
"What movement was ever spontaneous in any true sense of the word? This
seems to be more factitious than usual. You seem to know a great deal
about it; try it by the touchstone of subscriptions, a coarse but fairly
trustworthy criterion, and there is scarcely the color of money in it.
The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for
working expenses, railway fares, and stationery--the mere pasteboard
and scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere
financial inanition. "
"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too
poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,"
Pagett insisted.
"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement is
the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin
described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very
interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed
almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have
received an English education. "
"Surely that's a very important class. Its members must be the ordained
leaders of popular thought. "
"Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight
here. "
Pagett laughed. "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde. "
"Is it?
