still entirely free from unrest, which, except for a few sporadic outbreaks in other districts, has been hitherto mainly confined to three distinct areas—­the Mahratta Deccan, which comprises a great part of the Bombay Presidency and several districts of the Central Provinces, Bengal, with the new province of Eastern Bengal, and the Punjab.  In those regions it is the large cities that have been the real hot-beds of unrest, and, great as is their influence, it must not be forgotten that in India scarcely one-tenth of the population lives in cities, or even in small townships with more than 5,000 inhabitants.  Whereas in England one-third of the population is gathered together in crowded cities of 100,000 inhabitants and over, there are but twenty-eight cities of that size in the whole of India, with an aggregate population of less than 7,000,000 out of a total of almost 300,000,000.

That a movement confined to a mere fraction of the population of India has no title to be called a “national” movement would scarcely need to be argued, even if the variegated jumble of races and peoples, castes and creeds that make up the population of India were not in itself an antithesis to all that the word “national” implies.  Nevertheless it would be equally foolish to underrate the forces which underlie this movement, for they have one common nexus, and a very vital one.  They are the dominant forces of Hinduism—­forces which go to the very root of a social and religious system than which none in the history of the human race has shown greater vitality and stability.  Based upon caste, the most rigid of all social classifications, Hinduism has secured for some 3,000 years or more to the higher castes, and especially to the Brahmans, the highest of all castes, a social supremacy for which there is no parallel elsewhere.  At the same time, inflexibly as they have dominated Hinduism, these higher castes have themselves preserved a flexibility of mind and temper which has enabled them to adapt themselves with singular success to the vicissitudes of changing times without any substantial sacrifice of their inherited traditions and aspirations.  Thus it is amongst high-caste Hindus that for the last three-quarters of a century English education has chiefly spread, and, indeed, been most eagerly welcomed; it is amongst them that British administration has recruited the great majority of its native servants in every branch of the public service; it is amongst them also that are chiefly recruited the liberal professions, the Press, the schoolmasters—­in fact all those agencies through which public opinion and the mind of the rising generation are most easily moulded and directed.  That it is amongst them also that the spirit of revolt against British ascendency is chiefly and almost exclusively rife constitutes the most ominous feature of Indian unrest.

CHAPTER II.

Swaraj on the platform and in the press.