New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 205 pages of information about New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century.

New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 205 pages of information about New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century.
are more frequent and severe than in former dynasties, is the outstanding instance of the rank growth.  Neither the allegation of greater poverty nor the causes of the acknowledged low standard of living have been studied except in the fashion of party politicians.  Another of the ideas, as widely current, is that every ton of rice or wheat exported is an injury to the poor.  A third is that the payments made in Britain by the Government of India are virtually tribute, meanly exacted, instead of honest payment for cash received and for services rendered.  Again, what can be the remedy?  In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Foreign Mission Committee of the Church of Scotland objected to Dr. Duff, their missionary, teaching Political Economy in the Church’s Mission College, the General Assembly’s Institution, Calcutta.  They feared lest the East India Company would deem it an interference in politics.[46] In 1897, after the Tilak case already referred to, the writer on Indian affairs in The Times complained of the teaching of historical half-truths and untruths in Indian schools and colleges, instancing the partisan writings of Burke and Macaulay, and many Indian text-books full of glaring historical perversions.  The remedy for such erroneous ideas is certainly not to withhold the present dole of knowledge, but to teach the whole truth.  The recent History of India and Political Economy with reference to India should be compulsory subjects for every student in an Indian University.  It ought to be the policy of Government to select the ablest men for professors and teachers of such subjects.  If, along with that remedy, more Anglo-Indians would take a high view of their mission to India, and of their residence in that country, much of that regrettable bias and bitterness on the part of Indians would surely pass away.  If instead of adopting the attitude of exiles, thinking only of the termination of the exile and how to while away the interval, Anglo-Indians would take some interest in something Indian outside their business, much would be gained!  The best Anglo-Indians are eager to promote intercourse between Europeans and Indians, but many Anglo-Indians, whatever the cause, seem incapable of friendly intercourse.  On the matters that should interest both them and their fellow-citizens in India, they have in them nothing save unreasoned feelings.  These form the numerous class, of whom Sir Henry Cotton spoke in an address in London in February 1904, to whom it is an offence to travel in the same railway-carriage with Indians.  These are the corrupters of good feeling between Britons and Indians, as sympathetic men are the salt that preserves what good feeling may still exist.  In every Indian sphere the men of the latter class are well known to the native community, and are always spoken of with cordiality.  The writer remembers trying to have a talk with a British soldier about the generals of the army, and how the man seemed unable
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New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.