The same man who lies unblushingly in an English court, will
tell the truth to an assembly of caste-fellows, or to the Panohayat (a
committee of five which arbitrates in private disputes). Let British
Pharisees study the working of their own Divorce and County Courts:
they will not find much evidence of superior virtue! As for honesty,
the essence of commercialism is "taking advantage of other people's
needs," and no legal code has yet succeeded in drawing a line between
fair and unfair trade. In India and Japan merchants are an inferior
class; and loss of self-respect reacts unfavourably on the moral
sense. Ingratitude is a vice attributed to Bengalis by people who
have done little or nothing to elicit the corresponding virtue. As a
matter of fact their memory is extremely retentive of favours. They
will overlook any shortcomings in a ruler who has the divine gift
of sympathy, and serve him with devotion. Macaulay has branded them
with cowardice. If the charge were true, it was surely illogical and
unmanly to reproach a community numbering 50,000,000 for inherited
defects. Difference of environment and social customs will account
for the superior virility of Europeans as compared with their distant
kinsmen whose lot is cast in the sweltering tropics.
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