This lust would
probably be in temporary abeyance on the morrow of
a Socialist revolution, and at such a moment a new
departure in Asiatic policy might be taken with
permanently beneficial results. I do not mean, of
course, that we should force upon India that form
of democratic government which we have developed
for our own needs. I mean rather that we should
leave India to choose its own form of government, its
own manner of education and its own type of civilization.
India has an ancient tradition, very different
from that of Western Europe, a tradition highly
valued by educated Hindoos, but not loved by our
schools and colleges. The Hindoo Nationalist feels
that his country has a type of culture containing elements
of value that are absent, or much less marked,
in the West; he wishes to be free to preserve this,
and desires political freedom for such reasons rather
than for those that would most naturally appeal to
an Englishman in the same subject position. The
belief of the European in his own Kultur tends to be
fanatical and ruthless, and for this reason, as much as
for any other, the independence of extra-European
civilization is of real importance to the world, for it is
not by a dead uniformity that the world as a whole is
most enriched.
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