But no one who
has observed Bengali schoolboys standing up bare-legged to fast bowling
will question their bravery. In fact, the instinct of combativeness is
universal, and among protected communities it finds vent in litigation.
Englishmen who seek to do their duty by India have potential allies
in the educated classes, who have grafted Western learning on a
civilisation much more ancient than their own. Bengal has given many
illustrious sons to the empire. Among the dead I may mention Pandits
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Kissari Mohan Ganguli, whose vast
learning was eclipsed by their zeal for social service; Dr. Sambhu
Chandra Mukharji, whose biography I wrote in 1895; and Mr. Umesh
Chandra Banarji, a lawyer who held his own with the flower of our
English bar. A Bengali Brahmin is still with us who directs one of
the greatest contracting firms in the empire. How much brighter would
India's outlook be if this highly-gifted race were linked in bonds
of sympathy with our own!
The women of the Gangetic delta deserve a better fate than is
assigned to them by Hindu and Mohammadan custom. They are kept in
leading-strings from the cradle to the grave; their intellect is
rarely cultivated, their affections suffer atrophy from constant
repression.
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